Wednesday, January 14, 2009

(This list was last added to February 2012 and this list is in a state of disrepair due to technical issues resulting from technical upgrades. Updating of this list has been suspended. Excerpts from this list have been published in some Smashwords ebooks.)Lili Marlene has written ebooks about some famous synaesthetes! The ebooks can be downloaded from Smashwords. Here is a link to Lili's author page at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/LiliMarlene

This list is based on the lists of famous synesthetes compiled by synesthesia authority Sean Day (see references list), the writing of other synaesthesia researchers and academics, the Wikipedia article titled List of People With Synesthesia, and my own research.

My approach towards identifying famous cases of synaesthesia could be described as Bayesian. In making judgements and speculations I have kept in mind the probability of any non-famous person having synaesthesia, and it is not as low as some synaesthesia researchers have previously claimed. Recent scientific research (and research from the 1800s) has shown that synaesthesia is not a very rare condition, and because of this I feel no need to take an extremely sceptical view of evidence of synaesthesia in famous people.
- Lili Marlene

P-P – Denotes those who have been reported as having or having had perfect pitch/absolute pitch ability.
L-H – Denotes those who have been reported as being left-handed or originally left-handed, or who appear to be left-handed in photographs.
R-H – Denotes those who have been reported as being right-handed or who appear to be right-handed in photographs.
A – Denotes those who have been identified in any published source as a definite or possible case of any condition that is on the autistic spectrum, including Asperger syndrome.
M – Denotes those who have been reported as having been married or in a long-term relationship at any time.
H – Denotes those who have been reported as being homosexual or bisexual, or reported as identifying themselves as homosexual or bisexual. Tori Amos b. 1963, singer-songwriter and pianist with dual British/American citizenship, M.
Read about Tori Amos and synaesthesia at the Wikipedia's List of People With Synesthesiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_synesthesiaRollo Armstrong b. 1966, English music producer/remixer and member of the electronic music group Faithless.
Read about Rollo Armstrong and synaesthesia at the Wikipedia's List of People With Synesthesiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_synesthesia

Syd Barrett (real name Roger Barrett) 1946-2006, English songwriter, singer, guitarist and visual artist, best known as a founding member and songwriter of the psychedelic/progressive rock band Pink Floyd. Barrett's membership of the band came to an end after repeated failure to perform during concerts. Until this time he had been the main songwriter. Barrett withdrew from public life, but released two solo albums in 1970. In a 1971 Rolling Stone interview Barrett cited Jimi Hendrix as his favourite musician, who is also on this list.

There has been much speculation and theories about why Barrett ceased to be a member of Pink Floyd, withdrew from the public eye and finally disconnected his home's door bell. Some believe he developed schizophrenia as the result of the use of mind-altering drugs. Barrett used LSD in the 1960s and also used cannabis and the sedative drug Mandrax. I have not found any evidence that Barrett displayed the unique symptoms of schizophrenia. Bipolar has been suggested. Some have argued that he had a breakdown due to stress, and depression is a possibility that has also been mentioned. Former band-mate David Gilmour put forward a theory that a combination of epilepsy induced by strobe stage lighting and drugs might have altered Barrett's mental health (Geiger 2006).

For a long time there has been speculation that Barrett was autistic (Gallo 2006). Barrett's biographer Tim Willis has described Barrett's mind as "...extraordinary... bordering on the autistic or Aspergic." (Willis 2006). Barrett had talent in the areas of visual art and music, two in a group of talents that are characteristic of the autistic-type mind, and these talents were evident early in life (Barrett learned piano at the age of 8). People who have Asperger syndrome (AS) typically develop a strong and sustained interest in a narrow and unusual subject or interest. Barrett's sister Rosemary has described his interest in Byzantine art "...it was an enormous interest of his and he said it was going to be a book but it was really just a collection of dates and facts that interested him." (Titchmarsh 2007). It is also worth noting that his painting from his school years to late in his life was done to please himself (Chapman 2010 p.8). Chapmans’s book Syd Barrett: a very irregular head gives a hint that Barrett might have had the long attention-span that is characteristic of autism – when he visited great art galleries with his girlfriend “he would sit for hours looking at one painting” rather than hang out with interesting people in the cafeteria (Chapman 2010 p. 44).

Two characteristics of Barrett's that are highly suggestive of autism were his apparently decades-long habit of bouncing, and his toe-walking during adulthood. Barrett bounced on the balls of his feet during his high school years, a habit that persisted into adulthood (Miles 2006) and Willis has described finding Barrett bouncing on the balls of his feet when he answered his door, at some time during the last years of his life (Willis 2002). Numerous mentions of Barrett's bouncing and odd gait can be found in books about Pink Floyd and Barrett. The first-hand description of Barrett's strange walking (in a public place) on page 154 of the Watkinson and Anderson biography makes it clear to the reader that Barrett was a fundamentally unusual man. There is some evidence that Barrett’s unusual habit of bouncing on the balls of his feet while walking might have had advantages over the normal way that people walk and run. A study reported in New Scientist in January 2010 has found that running on the balls of the feet instead of the heels has much less physical impact on the feet, and two-thirds of endurance runners who habitually run barefoot run on the balls of their feet. There is some evidence that Barrett was barefoot more often than is usual while growing up, and this would be because shoes do not accommodate toe-walking.

There is no simple way to describe Barrett in relationships. He was socially popular but also independent and choosey about his friends. One source quoted by Rob Chapman in his 2010 book about Barrett described Barrett as kind, generous and sensitive but also in a world of his own. There is much anecdotal evidence that he had trouble tolerating crowds since his school years, but he still went to parties and got around. He was very popular with girls, women and groupies from his teens till his withdrawal from social life. He was attractive and charismatic and had some long-term relationships. He could also be violent towards some of the women in his life.

Although media reports almost always describe Barrett as a case of mental illness, his sister claimed he was never mentally ill, but never fitted the norm either. According to Rosemary he spent some time in an institution (but was given no treatment), and was assessed a number of times by psychiatrists over the years and was found to be unusual but not insane (Titchmarsh 2007). Being labelled as mad by ordinary people but pronounced sane by qualified psychiatrists is an experience reported by adults who have Asperger syndrome. Rosemary quoted in Chapman’s 2010 book about Barrett claimed that “personality disorder” was a label that was given to Barrett after his stay in an institution (Chapman 2010 p. 361). This is the type of label that was given to some autistic adults before Asperger syndrome was recognized. Barrett's reported outbursts of extreme anger (Willis 2002 book and extract inthe Observer) could be consistent with AS or epilepsy of the temporal lobes. Pink Floyd members reportedly claimed Barrett was unusual before he started using drugs heavily (Pareles 2006), undermining the theory that Barrett was a regular guy driven insane by drugs.

Barrett's sister and biographer Tim Willis have described Barrett as a synaesthete or possible synaesthete "... he would say that a sound was a colour to him." (Titchmarsh 2007). A report that Barrett described (to Rado Klose, an early Pink Floyd member) a C chord as yellow is given in the biography by Willis (page 21). Much later in Barrett's career, during the recording of his first solo album, one of Barrett's comments about the music provides further evidence of synaesthesia; "Perhaps we could make the middle darker and maybe the end a bit more middle-afternoonish [because] at the moment, it's too windy and icy" (Willis 2002 p. 106). Willis wrote that Barrett "drew" songs (Willis 2002 p.21), representations that could have been based on synaesthesia experiences. Barry Miles' book about Pink Floyd gives slightly fuller descriptions of Barrett's visual representations of his songs, in a book of coloured paintings (page 69) and drawings that resembled Venn diagrams (page 83). It would be fascinating to see these creations, if they still exist today. Some types of synaesthesia can be caused by high doses of LSD, so one could dismiss Barrett's synaesthesia as merely the side-effects of psychedelic drugs, but that could be a careless judgement. Drug-induced and genuine natural synaesthesia are different in a number of ways, so we might be able to tell which type Barrett experienced, based on descriptions of what his synaesthesia was like and how he used or described it. A group of researchers at Hannover Medical School has found that drug-induced synaesthesia does not have the consistency and automaticity that are the hallmarks of genuine synaesthesia (Sinke et al 2010). Because of this there would presumably be no point in making notes about drug-induced synaesthesia as a descriptive record to refer to later for re-creating musical triggers, because there would be no consistency between synaesthetic triggers and synaesthetic experiences. Based on the brief descriptions in Barry Miles’ book, I believe Barrett probably used his coloured representations of songs as working documents during song-writing, recording information about the songs to be referred to later. This means that if the colours represent experiences of musical synaesthesia, it must be genuine synaesthesia. Before we can categorize Barrett as a natural synaesthete with complete confidence, we would need to find evidence that he experienced synaesthesia early in life, before he started taking drugs. As an art school student Barrett had a very well developed sense of colour (Chapman 2010 p.50). One study had found that synaesthetes have an enhanced memory for colour (Yaro and Ward 2007). In his 2010 book Chapman asserted that the imagery in the song Astronomy Dominie by Barrett “conveys a strong sense of synaesthesia” (Chapman 2010 p.156).

Barrett's synaesthesia was not just an isolated personal oddity. Synaesthesia-like experiences were a part of the psychedelic scene which Barrett and Pink Floyd were a part of at the time. People were inventing various devices and systems of stage lighting for the types of venues that Pink Floyd played in, some of them designed to move in time with music. One 1967 concert by Pink Floyd was given the title "Music in Colour".

Researchers have reportedly found a possible genetic link between synaesthesia, autism and epilepsy (Robson 2009). It is possible that Barrett had some combination of these conditions. Autistic people have an increased susceptibility to epilepsy and to stress and anxiety. As far as I know, no link has ever been found between synaesthesia and schizophrenia, so evidence of synaesthesia contributes nothing to the case that Barrett was a schizophrenic. A.
Amy Beach 1867 –1944, American composer and pianist. A child prodigy, taught herself to read and started composing music at the age of four. The Wikipedia article about famous synaesthetes List of People With Synesthesia and Sean Day’s web site about synesthesia both report that Beach had perfect pitch and also had coloured musical key synaesthesia. P-P, M.

Ludwig van Beethoven 1770–1827, Prussian/German composer and pianist, one of the world’s most famous and influential classical music composers. According to The Oxford Companion to Music, on one occasion Beethoven described B minor as black, which suggests the possibility that Beethoven had some type of coloured music synaesthesia, a condition that has been described in a number of other important classical composers. In her book Tasting the Universe Maureen Seaberg also claimed that Beethoven “saw” the D-major key as orange (p. 174). Beethoven displayed talent at a very young age and is believed to have had “perfect pitch”. In the book The Genesis of Artistic Creativity Professor Michael Fitzgerald concluded that Beethoven “meets the criteria for Asperger’s syndrome” and also meets the criteria for “schizoid personality disorder” (Fitzgerald 2005 p. 167). Beethoven never married but was engaged at one time and had at least one other affair. Various images can be found on the internet that are supposed to be photographs of a hand cast of one of Beethoven’s hands. It would be interesting to view such an image that can be verified positively as genuine, to see if Beethoven’s 2D:4D finger ratio was as low as Liszt’s appears to have been. The 2D:4D finger ratio is supposed to be a reflection of a person’s exposure to testosterone during intra-uterine development. A quick survey of images on the internet suggests that Beethoven might have had an unusually long ring finger as in Liszt’s right hand. Beethoven suffered from hearing loss that began in his 20s. According to one book a biographer who knew Beethoven well claimed he was a left-hander but portraits show him as right-handed (Wright 2007). L-H, A, P-P.
Leonard Bernstein 1918-1990, American conductor, composer, pianist, author, music lecturer, won a number of Emmy Awards, a very influential figure in the history of American classical music. Bernstein has been identified as a timbre-colour synaesthete by Sean Day, and other sources list Bernstein as a synaesthete. A quote from Leonard Bernstein: "A composer of symphonies has all the notes in the rainbow before him." (quoted in the book Visual music). A photograph shows Bernstein writing with his right hand. R-H?, H, M.
(Paul) Eugen Bleuler 1857-1939, Swiss psychiatrist and pioneer of psychiatry. He coined the terms “schizophrenia”, "schiziod" and “autismus” (English translation – autism), but he used the term “autismus” to define symptoms of schizophrenia, which is not the current usage of this term. Bleuler was also one of the researchers in the 1800s who wrote about synaesthesia, co-writing a book (in German) on the subject that was published two years before Galton's Inquiries into human faculty and its development. According to a review published in the scientific journal Nature in 1881, of the book that Bleuler co-authored with Karl Lehmann, Bleuler experienced colours after hearing or thinking about words and vowels, and he also had many relatives with the same condition. The modern term for this type of synaesthesia is “phoneme-color synesthesia” or “phoneme-colour synaesthesia”. The discovery of Bleuler’s synaesthesia inspired Bleuler and Lehmann (a non-synaesthete) to write the book. At the time they were both medical students in Zurich. Sir Francis Galton made reference to Bleuler and Lehmann’s book on pages 106-107 of his book Inquiries into human faculty and its development, “One of the authors had the faculty [synaesthesia] very strongly, and the other had not…” (Galton 1883).

Sir Robert Cailliau b. 1947, Belgian computer scientist who developed the World Wide Web with Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Dr Cailliau worked at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) from 1974 to 2007. In 2004 Dr Cailliau was made a Commander in the Order of King Leopold. The Order of Leopold is the highest Order of Belgium. Sir Robert's grapheme-colour synaesthesia influenced his choice of colour for the logo for the World Wide Web. Dr Cailliau is an atheist. R-H?

Justin Chancellor b. 1971, British-American musician with some Norwegian ancestry, bass player for Grammy Award-winning progressive metal band Tool, former member of the band Peach. Chancellor was identified as a synaesthete in a lecture given in 2009 by synesthesia expert Dr David Eagleman. Chancellor apparently has coloured music synaesthesia. M.

Eleanor Dark 1901-1985, Australian novelist and winner of two Australian Literature Society Gold Medals for literature for the novels Prelude to Christopher and Return to Coolami. Her best known work is The Timeless Land. Dark and her husband were most probably under ASIO surveillance at one time because of her husband’s left-wing writing and political involvement. The Darks were acquaintances of another famous Australian politically-left synaesthete in this list – “Doc” Evatt. Eleanor Dark's mother died in her early 40s in the Callan Park Hospital for the Insane. Accusations have been made that her death was ultimately the result of a long and abusive marriage. Eleanor Dark's father was a writer and a politician known as an advocate of womens' rights. Unhappy marriages are a recurring theme in Dark's early novels. Helen O’Reilly, who is related to Eleanor Dark, has recently argued in Southerly that Dark was a synaesthete and this was an influence on her writing. This argument is based upon descriptions of a character’s synaesthesia in Dark’s unpublished semi-autobiographical novel Pilgrimage, and the effective use of colour in characterization in Dark’s novel Prelude to Christopher, a novel that has been described as “deeply controversial”. O’Reilly appears to be using an unscientific definition of synaesthesia that is too broad; “to see things in colour”, but I do think the passages that O’Reilly quotes from Pilgrimage in the Southerly article are descriptions of what could be synaesthesia. In Helen O'Reilly's 2009 PhD thesis about Dark's novels, she argued that "Eleanor Dark's over-riding themes are time and memory". Chapter one of the thesis is about Dark's unpublished novel Pilgrimage, which O'Reilly describes as "primarily a memoir". This thesis chapter includes many quotes from the novel and information about Dark's childhood. Quotes from the novel describe various types of synaesthesia including coloured words, coloured "figures", coloured people, coloured touch, audible touch, colours evoking musical notes, people associated with musical notes and coloured emotions or states of consciousness. Some of the passages that O'Reilly claims are descriptions of synaesthesia are questionable. Emotional detachment is another characteristic of the main character in the novel described. M.

Alan Davies b. 1966, English actor, writer and comedian, plays Jonathan Creek in the TV series Jonathan Creek. On an episode of the BBC quiz game QI Davies and actor Stephen Fry appear to be describing their own coloured days of the week synesthesias. Were they only joking? M.

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington 1899 –1974, American bandleader, composer and pianist, one of the most influential figures in jazz. M.

H. V. "Doc" Evatt QC KStJ 1894-1965, also known and “Bert” Evatt, President of the United Nations General Assembly 1948-1949, co-drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, former leader of the Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition, Attorney-General of Australia, Minister of External Affairs, Justice of the High Court of Australia, Chief Justice of New South Wales. Evatt’s cross-examination of a key ASIO operative in the Royal Commission into the Petrov affair caused great discomfort for the Menzies Government and Evatt’s leave to appear in the commission was withdrawn.

One of the most complex, argued over and important figures in Australian history. Evatt, Billy Hughes and Mark Latham were recently cited as mad past ALP leaders in an essay in The Monthly by Annabel Crabb (Crabb 2011). Evatt had a brilliant mind, “a highly retentive memory” (p.9 Crockett 1993), “a colossal intellectual curiosity” (Kim Beasley quoted in Tennant 1970 p.99), “egocentricity” (Crockett 1993 p.28), an often disagreeable and sometimes awkward or hateful personality, a terrible fear of flying (not a good phobia for a Foreign Minister to have) and many eccentricities. In a documentary Evatt was described as “consumed with ambition” and a “prima donna”.

Evatt was born with a large head (Tennant 1970 p.5). His father died when he was six years old and he and siblings were raised by his mother. Evatt was an “obsessive high achiever” academically and was dux of his school (1995 documentary). Evatt befriended Eric Dark (among others) at university, who would go on to marry another famous Australian synaesthete who is in this list, the writer Eleanor Dark, and would also have an ASIO file due to his Leftist political activity. Evatt played a variety of sports during his university years and he genuinely loved sport and children. He also enjoyed the finer things in life such as classical music, jazz and art. He could play the piano and would take sheet music to classical music concerts to read with an enthusiastic enjoyment of the music. Evatt’s wife was a painter and Evatt was a supporter of the modern art movement in Australia. Evatt and his wife had two children, both adopted, and a happy marriage. Evatt’s energy was not directed toward personal presentation. His hair and dress have been described as “studied dishevelment” and his voice a monotone with a “broad Australian twang” (Crockett 1993 p.168). Evatt was a large man, which could have been a cause of his fatal arteriosclerosis. He drank in moderation and rarely smoked. Possibly Evatt had undiagnosed asthma, as he was distressed by cigarette smoke (Crockett 1993 p.39) and had “frequent respiratory disturbances” (Crockett 1993 p.24). “He slept little in order to meet a massive and diverse workload...” (Crockett 1993 p.41) but inexplicably would sometimes receive guests in bed while fully clothed. Evatt was an important advocate of human rights but often showed little respect for individual people, and had a disdain of the idea of respect (Crockett 1993 p. 37). Evatt was an eccentric user of telephones. He would habitually end telephone conversations by simply hanging up (Crockett 1993 p.155), and Evatt’s phone calls were sometimes very long or made at odd hours. Evatt could be a bit of a phone-stalker, combining his capacity for great persistence when pursuing an important political aim with communications technology.

It appears that Peter Crockett, the author of the interesting but at times annoyingly Freudian 1993 biography Evatt: a life deserves the credit as the only writer to publish an original description of Evatt’s synaesthesia (coloured days of the week), even though Crockett did not describe it as such (p.9 Crockett 1993). The source of this information was a 1986 letter from Frank Hinder, an Australian artist in Evatt’s painter wife’s social set. This letter also stated that Evatt “...complained that he was unable to visualise a certain well-known street corner”, which could be interpreted as evidence of agnosia for scenes, a neurological disability in recognizing landscapes. Evatt appears to have been right-handed. In the mid-fifties, during Evatt’s political career, there was speculation about his mental health among members of the ALP Caucus, probably as a response for Evatt’s increasing suspiciousness. Opinions from psychiatrist friends were sought, but no appropriate label was found (Murray 1972 p.169). It is important to remember that Evatt’s death in the mid-60s is thought to have been due to arteriosclerosis, and it is believed this was the cause of his increasingly odd behaviour and intellectual decline from the late 1950s. Evatt was personally unpopular with many of the people he worked with. Asperger syndrome has been suggested as an explanation for Evatt's exceptional mind, complex personality and eccentricities. In the 1994 biography Doc Evatt by Buckley, Dale and Reynolds it is argued that Evatt might have been a closet epileptic with "partial seizures", and this is offered as an explanation for Evatt's mental decline. The evidence given, in some ways similar to the recent Wikileaks “Cablegate” leaks, was a diplomatic cable sent in 1943 by Evatt from Washington to Canberra, relaying a message to a Sydney neurosurgeon "Agree with your diagnosis. Might try combination of Luminal and Dilantin." Both of these drugs are used to treat epilepsy. As further evidence that Evatt was epileptic, Buckley, Dale and Reynolds claim that Evatt was chauffeured but did not drive. Two other people in this list of famous synaesthetes are non-drivers, but it is not clear why. Autistic people have an elevated risk of developing epilepsy. I do not know if this is also true of synaesthetes. M. R-H.

Richard Feynman 1918-1988, American physicist and academic, jointly won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, assisted in the development of the atomic bomb, a pioneer in the fields of quantum computing and nanotechnology, a keen popularizer of physics and wrote some popular semi-autobiographical books. Feynman’s synaesthesia is described in his book What Do You Care What Other People Think? According to one biographer Feynman used LSD, but this does not explain Feynman’s synaesthesia, which was the grapheme-colour type, which is not a psychedelic experience. According to a group of researchers from Hannover Medical School, synaesthesia associated with sequences such as letters, numbers and weekdays are never found in drug-induced synaesthesia (Sinke et al 2010). Feynman was a late speaker, not uttering a word up to the age of 3. In his book The Hidden Sense van Campen identified Feynman and Einstein as two famous physicists who used visual thinking to solve theoretical puzzles. Einstein was also very delayed in his early speech development. The idea that Feynman was a "visual thinker", which synaesthetes are thought to be, was possibly undermined by Feynman's observations about the different ways that people think which he shared on the BBC TV series Fun to Imagine, which can be viewed on YouTube. Richard Feynman had trouble telling left from right, using a mole on his left hand as a guide (McManus 2002 p. 66). He has been described as a free spirit and an eccentric with a great sense of humour. One source identifies Feynman as possibly a left-hander (Wright 2007). L-H?, M.

Emile Ford b. Emile Sweetman in 1937 in the West Indies, singer and musician, Emile Ford and the Checkmates had a number 1 hit in the UK singles chart in 1959 with What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For? Annotator Roger Dopson and journalist Norman Joplin have apparently documented Ford’s coloured and patterned sound synaesthesia.

Stephen Fry b. 1957, English actor, comedian, TV presenter and writer. Fry has written novels, played the lead in a biographical movie about Oscar Wilde, and has starred in many successful TV series. On an episode of the BBC quiz game QI Stephen Fry and actor Alan Davies appear to be describing their own coloured days of the week synesthesias. Were they only joking? I think Fry appeared to be speaking with sincerity. Fry has reportedly been professionally diagnosed with cyclothymia, a mood disorder that is a mild form of bipolar disorder, and Fry has featured in a two-part BBC documentary about bipolar (manic depression). H, M.

Paul Gauguin
The book The yellow house has a chapter in it titled “Musicians in colour”, and the synaesthesia of Gauguin and van Gogh is described (Gayford 2006).

Vincent van Gogh 1853–1890, Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who’s works are very popular and fetch very high prices. Much evidence that van Gogh had synaesthesia has been found by those who take the time to search. Greta Berman has identified van Gogh as having had coloured emotions, musical colours, coloured musical notes and was also a personifier. According to Cretien van Campen, van Gogh took piano lessons in 1885 to learn about “color tone”, but his teacher discontinued the lessons after concluding that van Gogh was insane because he was constantly comparing the sounds of piano keys with colours. Van Campen refers to some other evidence that I think also indicates that van Gogh had synaesthesia. In the book Vincent By Himself Bruce Bernard writes that van Gogh took piano lessons some time between 1882 and 1885 in order “to correlate musical harmony with Delacroix’s theories of colour”. The only theory of colour of Delacroix’s that I am aware of has nothing to do with the ideas about synaesthesia that were fashionable in the world of literature and art at the time, so I think this might be evidence that van Gogh’s interest in coloured music was due to his own genuine neurological synaesthesia rather than an interest in synaesthesia as an artistic idea. Bernard asserts that these lessons were discontinued because the teacher could not understand van Gogh’s passion for Wagner, for some unstated reason. On page 47 of the book Vincent By Himself is an excerpt of a letter by van Gogh in which he states that “Some artists have a nervous hand at drawing, which gives their technique something of the sound peculiar to a violin” and he goes on to compare the work of other artists with piano playing, asking “Do you feel this too? – Millet is perhaps a stately organ”. On page 162 is an excerpt from a letter in which van Gogh writes about “making a kind of music of tones with colour” and he considers being “a musician in colours”. Another van Gogh quote that suggests a mixing of the sense of music and the sense of colour can be found on page 22 of the book The sound of painting; “Painting … promises to become more subtle – more music and less sculpture – in short, what will come is colour.” (Maur 1999). The book The Yellow House has a chapter in it titled “Musicians in colour”, and the synaesthesia of Gauguin and van Gogh is described (Gayford 2006). Van Gogh had an unusual awareness and love of colour. He found painters’ theories of colour to be “unutterably beautiful” (Gayford 2006 p. 190). Synaesthesia researchers have found an “enhanced memory for colour per se” in synaesthetes (Yaro and Ward 2007).

Van Gogh has been posthumously diagnosed by over 150 psychiatrists with a range of different medical and mental conditions, including temporal lobe epilepsy, bipolar, schizophrenia, Asperger syndrome (with “affective disorder”), hypergraphia, syphilis, and absinthe poisoning. Absinthe, a potent herbal alcoholic spirit, has been banned in many countries. According to one book van Gogh was diagnosed with advanced syphilis during his time in Antwerp. Explanations such as syphilis and absinthe do not explain everything that was different about van Gogh, as he had a taciturn and serious personality since childhood. During his adult life van Gogh had little success in his friendships and relationships. Van Gogh was the painter who chopped off his own ear. He died two days after shooting himself in the chest. A.

Maxim Gorky? (Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov) 1868–1936, Russian/Soviet author and political activist. One Russian web site Synaesthesia offers an article titled On Maxim Gorky's Synaethesia but it is currently only available in Russian, and I can’t read Russian.

Andre-Ernest Gretry 1741-1813, Belgium-born composer. Some statements written by Gretry are suggestive of synaesthesia "Thanks to the analogy that exists among all the phenomena of nature, the well-schooled musician may find all colours in the harmony of sounds." (Quote by Gretry from the book Visual Music taken from a translation in a book by Morgenstern).
Helene Grimaud b. 1969, French pianist and co-founder of the Wolf Conservation Center. Grimaud has described herself as agitated and over-focused as a child. She entered the Paris Conservatory at age 13. Grimaud experiences coloured sound synaesthesia.

Jimi Hendrix/James Marshall Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix), 1942–1970, influential American rock guitarist, singer and songwriter. This is a quote from a book chapter about Hendrix: "Hendrix claimed that he played 'colours' rather than notes, and that he saw the music in his head while he played." (Wright 2007, p. 208). Hendrix had a reputation for taking LSD and other mind-altering drugs, and LSD causes an artificial type of synaesthesia that I believe is consistent with Hendrix’s described experiences, but I also believe this description might not be inconsistent with naturally-occurring synaesthesia. Hendrix had an extraordinary musical memory and “could learn a band’s entire repertoire in one sitting” (Douglas 2011). Hendrix died from an overdose of sleeping pills. He had a sibling who was born blind and two other siblings born with other problems. One biographer claimed that Hendrix falsely claimed to be homosexual in order to be discharged from the army. Hendrix is reported to have been a left-hander and gifted with perfect pitch, L-H, P-P.

David Hockney CH RA b. 1937, English artist, one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century. Hockney is well known for his paintings of swimming pools and gay couples, and his designs of opera sets. Hockney’s synaesthesia has been described by synesthesia research pioneer Richard Cytowic in his book Synesthesia: a Union of the Senses. Cytowic met with Hockney in 1981 and did a study of the artist's synaesthesia. A transcript of an interview of Hockney by Cytowic can be found in the aforementioned book. On page 21 of Hockney’s book That’s the Way I See It, Hockney recounts that the music of the opera The Rake’s Progress seemed “very linear and spiky” when he was designing the sets for this opera, which might have influenced his use of crosshatching. According to some biographies on the internet, Hockney “never really cared what people thought of him and always did as he pleased” since his early years. Hockney’s eccentricity can be seen in his whimsical sense of fashion and in his swimming pool decorated to look like one of his own paintings of a swimming pool (photograph on the verso page of That’s the Way I See It). Hockney has had hearing loss with an onset in his adult life. H. R-H?

Siri Hustvedt b.1955, American novelist. Hustvedt’s unstructured and interesting but debatable autobiographical book The Shaking Woman, which was unfortunately written from a psychoanalytic perspective, is about the author’s search for an explanation for her mysterious bouts of involuntary violent shaking during public speaking which is not associated with any conscious experience of anxiety. It was reportedly finally diagnosed as a seizure disorder although in her book Hustvedt wrote about her condition as a case of of “hysteria” or conversion disorder. Hustvedt described various types of synaesthesia that she has experienced – “early” personifications of objects (p. 108), mirror-touch synaesthesia (p.117-118) and cross-sensory and emotional responses to light, colours and sounds (p.118-119). Hustvedt had migraines since childhood, “most days” waking with one with accompanying sensory hypersensitivity. In the book the author described a high-interventionist and seemingly inept medical management of a past year-long migraine episode that was preceded by a brief involuntary violent movement of an arm, then a feeling of euphoria, which is sometimes found with epilepsy. Doctors gave this episode the label “vascular migraine syndrome”. Interesting neurological experiences that were apparently associated with her migraines included “divine lifting feelings” and a visual hallucination which could be identified as a Lilliputian hallucination or Charles Bonnet syndrome (p.5, p.157). Hustvedt explained that her late father experienced flashbacks of a war combat memory (PTSD?) and he also experienced an episode of shaking during a church service. Hustvedt also experienced a brief episode of PTSD following a car accident. Hustvedt’s mysterious shaking disorder was mostly cured by the drug propranolol, which is prescribed for a number of conditions including PTSD flashbacks. Hustvedt also has family members from three generations who “hear voices” but without the delusions that are characteristic of mental illness. Hustvedt explained that her “voices” are experienced just before falling asleep, in the normal but special state of consciousness known as hypnagogia. As a child she experienced voices occasionally when she was alone, and some of her sisters also experienced voices in childhood, well before the typical age of onset of schizophrenia. In an interview on The Book Show on Australian public radio Hustvedt compared her hypnagogic voices with hypnagogic voices and visual experiences experienced by another synaesthete novelist, Vladimir Nabokov, as described in his memoir Speak, Memory, in which he also described his grapheme-colour synaesthesia. Other hypnagogic experiences of the author include brilliantly coloured figurative and abstract visuals, and once a hallucination of seeing herself. Siri’s sister Asti Hustvedt has also written a book on the subject of conversion disorder or “hysteria” - Asti’s work a non-fiction history book. M.

Richard D. James/Aphex Twin b. 1971 in Ireland, a highly influential figure in contemporary electronic music, claimed in The Wire magazine to be artistically inspired by lucid dreams and synaesthesia. As I have not been able to obtain the article in which these claims were made, I am unable to form my own opinion as to whether James is a natural synaesthete.
Elvin Jones 1927-2004, influential American jazz drummer. Jones was fascinated with drums from an early age. M.

Wassily Kandinsky 1866-1944, his name also spelt Vasily or Wassilij Kandinskij, Russian painter, art theorist and printmaker, creator of the first modern abstract paintings, studied law and economics before becoming an artist. Synaesthesia was an idea that Kandinsky used in his art work, but there has been a lot of debate about whether or not Kandinsky was a genuine neurological syneasthete. He is classified as a psuedo-synaesthete by Sean Day, described as “a synesthetic artist” by Cytowic in The Man Who Tasted Shapes, synaesthesia researcher Jamie Ward cites Kandinsky as a possible case, and Ione and Tyler favoured the case that he was genuine in a 2003 paper. Van Campen wrote in The Hidden Sense that he found evidence in Kandinsky’s autobiographical writings that suggest that he was a synaesthete and van Campen also argued that Kandinsky was a synaesthete in a 1997 paper. In the book The sound of painting Maur wrote that Kandinsky “was convinced that colours could be heard and himself possessed this gift in high degree,” (Maur 1999 p. 30). Kandinsky was identified as a possible case of Asperger syndrome (AS) by Swedish AS expert Christopher Gillberg (Gillberg 2002). Kandinsky was apparently fascinated by the voice of his second wife Nina, and he was inspired to create the abstract painting To the Unknown Voicehttp://www.wassilykandinsky.net/work-99.php after the first time he heard Nina’s voice, on a telephone. R-H, A, M.

Manu Katche b. 1958, French songwriter and drummer, with Ivory Coast heritage. Katche has worked as a session musician with an impressive range of bands and artists.

Zoltan Kodaly 1882-1967, Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist and educator. In the second edition of his book Synesthesia: a union of the senses, synesthesia expert Richard Cytowic wrote that Kodaly had coloured hearing. Kodaly was a life-long friend of Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, who has been identified as having had Asperger syndrome by a number of different authors, M.

Val Lewton 1904-1951, born Vladimir
Ivanovich Leventon in Yalta, but his name was anglicized when his family moved to the United States from Berlin. Lewton is most famous as the producer of a series of sad, evocative and intelligent but low-budget movies for RKO in the 1940s, some of them in the horror-movie genre. Lewton was also a novelist, a screenplay writer and a failed journalist, and he did a lot of work on screenplays of his own films that was either uncredited or under a pen name. I have written about Val Lewton and his synaesthesia and some other famous and fascinating synesthetes in my new book, which can be downloaded from its page at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/236446

Gyorgi Ligeti 1923-2006, Transylvanian-born Austrian composer, to the general public he is known for his music featured in movies directed by Stanley Kubrick. Ligeti wrote some pieces of electronic music before returning to composing instrumental music. During the war some of Ligeti’s close family members died in concentration camps, and in the 1950s Ligeti fled to Vienna to escape from the Soviet bloc. Van Campen wrote that Ligeti imagined music in pictures throughout his life, since his early childhood years (van Campen 2008). The quotes by Ligeti in van Campen’s book suggest that Ligeti had a number of different types of synaesthesia and was a spatial thinker. For Ligeti the spatial sense of laterality even had extra sensory characteristics, left and right each having different colours, sounds and textures. A Ligeti quote published at Sean Day’s web site and also at the Wikipedia describes a number of different types of synaesthesia experienced by Ligeti, including colored letters, coloured numbers, coloured and shaped sounds, coloured chords and a red trumpet sound. By his own account Ligeti did not have perfect pitch. Ligeti’s personality has been described as demanding, charming, hyper-energetic, capricious, very complex and eccentric. He "loathed all forms of sentimentality" and had a caustic wit (Swed 2006). Ligeti described the music of Debussy as "the only music which leaves a lovely smell in the air" (Benjamin 2007). The great synaesthete composer Olivier Messiaen apparently held Ligeti’s work in very high esteem. M. R-H?

Franz Liszt 1811-1886, Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, piano teacher, a benefactor to some other composers and a supporter of various charitable and humanitarian causes. Liszt is considered by some to have been the greatest pianist in history. He was a superstar in his time. His stage presence was compelling and members of the audience were affected by mass hysteria. A description of Liszt’s coloured music synaesthesia can be found at Sean Day’s web site and also at the List of People With Synesthesia at the Wikipedia. Casts have been made of the hands of some of the most famous European composers. A cast of Liszt’s right hand appears to have an extraordinarily long ring finger, compared with the index finger (Manning 2007). Presumably this would give Liszt a very low 2D:4D finger ratio, suggesting that Liszt was exposed to unusually high levels of prenatal testosterone. A photo of the cast of Liszt’s hand can be seen at the web site of the Liszt Museum at The Liszt School of Music Weimar. A different photo of a cast of Liszt’s left hand in the Magyar Nemzeti Muzeum in Budapest can be seen in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. It is hard to compare the length of the fingers in this photo. Some internet sources claim Liszt had perfect pitch. P-P?, M.

Paul McCartney b. 1942, former singer, songwriter and guitarist of the legendary rock and roll band the Beatles. This is a quote from a book chapter about Paul McCartney; "Also one of his classical pieces was ordered around the "colours" of the orchestra's instruments, suggesting a degree of synesthesia (perhaps a side-benefit of LSD)." (Wright 2007, p. 216). L-H, M.

John Mayer b. 1977, American blues/rock musician and winner of seven Grammy Awards and a number of other music awards. It is thought that Mayer is a synaesthete. In a piece about Jimi Hendrix that Mayer wrote for Rolling Stone magazine, Mayer twice made reference to colours in Hendrix's music - "That's part of what made his playing so compelling - all you heard was the color." and "People want to paint him as this lonely, shy figure who managed to let himself open up on the stage and play straight colors through the crowd." (Mayer 2004). Mayer has suffered from panic attacks in the past.
Olivier Messiaen 1908-1992, French composer, church organist and ornithologist. His music is rhythmically complex. He used his harmony–colour synaesthesia in his compositions, and his fascination with birdsong was also a musical influence. The experience of colour was a strong element in his appreciation of music. Messiaen's synaesthesia and its influence on his music has been written about by a number of writers (see references section), including Richard Cytowic in the 2nd edition of Synesthesia: a union of the senses. There is no doubt that Messiaen was a genuine synaesthete. One web site reports that Messiaen had perfect pitch. P-P, M.

Joan Mitchell 1925-1992 American abstract painter. Biographer Patricia Albers has asserted that Mitchell experienced colored graphemes, colored sound, colored personalities, emotionally mediated synesthesia and had an eidetic memory, and Albers has argued that her synaesthesia might have been an important influence on Mitchell's works. The title of the 2011 biography by Albers is Joan Mitchell, lady painter: a life. Sexism was an issue that Mitchell was forced to confront in her career during the 1950s. Mitchell was a hard drinker and she has been described as "...a piece of work", "abrasive", "famously foul-mouthed", "grossly insensitive" and "fiercely intelligent, well-educated".

Piet Mondrian (1872-1944, born Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, Dutch painter. Some of Mondrian’s abstract geometric paintings, including Broadway Boogie Woogie and Victory Boogie Woogie, evoke synaesthesia when viewed. According to the notes for the Mondrian work Ocean 5 in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, "For him the vertical, such as the forest, was male, while the horizontal, such as the sea, female." This suggests that Mondrian possibly had a personification type of synaesthesia. Mondrian hated the colour green, and he would deliberately turn his back on scenes that had trees in them. Even though he hated crowds, Mondrian’s great love of jazz bought him to clubs where he would dance and enjoy music. He dated some women but this did not lead to a relationship. Mondrian lived alone in an apartment that he decorated in the stark, geometrical and minimalist style of his paintings. For long periods there was virtually no market for his paintings, and the movement of abstract artists which he loosely belonged to had a hard time winning acceptance, but Mondrian persisted with his artistic vision. Mondrian is one of the famous role models profiled in the children’s book Different like me: my book of autism heroes by Jennifer Elder.)

Alison Motluk - a freelance journalist who is possibly best known for her work during her years as a staff reporter at New Scientist magazine. Motluk's descriptions of her own colour-grapheme synaesthesia can be found in her own writing and in a press article by another journalist.

Julie Myerson b. 1960, English novelist, journalist, columnist, non-fiction writer and a regular panellist on BBC2’s Newsnight Review, married to playwright and journalist Jonathan Myerson. In 2003 Myerson wrote about her coloured word synaesthesia in an article that can be read at Telegraph.co.uk. Many references to synaesthesia-coloured experiences can be found in Myerson's creative writing. In March 2009 Julie Myerson has been at the centre of a controversy in which ethical questions have been asked about her writing about her own offspring. Myerson wrote the book The Lost Child about her son Jake's alleged use of a potent form of cannabis and the decision to evict him from the family home. Myerson has also written an anonymous column titled Living with Teenagers in the Guardian, which was reportedly axed when one of the children's school friends identified the family. M.

Vladimir Nabokov 1899-1977, Russian-American novelist and writer of short stories. His most well-known and important novel is probably Lolita, which was banned in England, France and a number of other countries. Nabokov wrote in several languages including Russian and English and was trilingual from an early age. Van Campen described Nabokov as “a linguistic genius” in his book The Hidden Sense. Nabokov used index cards to create his novels. Nabokov also made contributions to the science of entomology (the study of insects). The Harvard Museum of Natural History is said to contain a cabinet housing Nabokov’s collection of male blue butterfly genitalia, which he studied to discern one species from another, straining his eyesight. According to Nabokov's son, during the first part of Vladimir's childhood he was a mathematical calculating prodigy, but lost this strange talent following a feverish illness (D. Nabokov in Cytowic & Eagleman 2009 p. 251).

In 2000 Salon magazine published an interesting article about Vladimir's feminine but defiant brother Sergei, who was arrested by the Gestapo because he was a homosexual and died in a German concentration camp in 1945. Sergei had a bad stutter but he was also reportedly fluent in four languages. According to the Salon article, Nabokov also had two gay uncles, one also a stutterer. Vladimir Nabokov apparently hated homosexuality, regarding it as a hereditary illness.

Nabokov described his coloured letters (grapheme-colour synaesthesia) in his autobiography Speak, Memory. Nabokov's remarkable autobiographical memory is also evident in Speak, Memory. In the second edition of his book Synesthesia: a union of the senses, synesthesia researcher Richard Cytowic identified Nabokov as having had an eidetic memory as well as the type of synaesthesia in which letters of the alphabet are experienced as possessing personalities (ordinal-linguistic personification or OLP). In the 2009 book by Cytowic and another synesthesia researcher David Eagleman Wednesday is indigo blue, Nabokov is discussed or identified as eidetic, having coloured phonemes, coloured graphemes and personified graphemes (OLP). Some of Nabokov's fictional characters have been identified as obvious synaesthetes. There is no doubt that Nabokov was a genuine polymodal synaesthete. Nabokov had a mother, a wife and a son who also had/have synaesthesia – a family that could be described in scientific terms as featuring inherited synaesthesia combined with assortative mating between synaesthetes. The book Wednesday is indigo blue features an interesting afterword by Dmitri Nabokov, the synaesthete son and translator of Vladimir Nabokov. In his recent book Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks has identified Nabokov as a possible case of amusia, a neurological condition that makes people unable to enjoy music. Nabokov never learned to drive a car and is shown seated in the passenger's seat of a car in a photo on the cover of an edition of one of his books. Some photographic evidence indicates that V. Nabokov was a right-hander. R-H?, M.

Itzhak Perlman

Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849, American poet, writer of short stories, literary critic and editor, best known for his horror fiction and macabre poems, and is thought to have invented the detective fiction genre. In the book The Hidden Sense Van Campen writes about the light – sound synesthesia described in Poe’s poem Al Araaf and it’s footnotes, but it is clear that van Campen considers that Poe was not a natural synaesthete as Poe is placed in the book chapter titled “Exploring drug-induced synesthesia”. A variety of ailments have been suggested by writers to explain Poe’s episodes of lost consciousness, including alcoholism, drug abuse and temporal lobe epilepsy. Sensory hypersensitivity is a recurring theme in Poe’s stories, which suggests that he had some personal experience of the autistic spectrum or some type of neurological disorder. Poe married his 13 year old cousin who died of tuberculosis. The cause of his death is a mystery, and many possible causes have been suggested, none of them nice. M.

Jill Price b. 1965, Jill Price, a Jewish American school administrator, is famous for being one of the few people identified by a team of American university researchers to date as having a recently-described neurological condition Hyperthymestic syndrome, characterized by an extraordinary memory for autobiographical events. Price has described her memory as “non-stop, uncontrollable and totally exhausting”. Price was the subject of a 2006 paper published in the medical journal Neurocase which is believed to be the first scientific report of Hyperthymestic syndrome. In this paper Price was given the name “A.J.” to protect her identity as a study subject. Price co-wrote an autobiography, The Woman Who Can’t Forget. In March 2009 Price was featured in a brief story about memory on the ABCTV science show Catalyst. Price has been compared with Solomon Shereshevskii, a Russian Jewish synaesthete journalist who had a very amazing memory who was made famous as one of A. Luria's study subjects, and Price has also been compared with Daniel Tammet, a British autistic synaesthete memory, language and mathematics savant who became famous through his record-breaking, autobiographies and a documentary, but the American researchers who have been studying Price have tended to dismiss such comparisons and have also been somewhat dismissive of the idea that Price might have synaesthesia.

Price’s history of depression, insomnia and anxiety has been documented, and some of her behaviour has been compared with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Researchers found an interesting pattern of strengths and weaknesses during neuropsychological testing. They concluded that Price may have a variant of a neurodevelopmental frontostriatal “disorder”. They listed autism, OCD, ADHD, Tourette’s syndrome and schizophrenia as examples of this category of “disorders”.

There are descriptions on page 42 of the Neurocase paper and on pages 30-31 of the autobiographical book, of Price’s time-space synaesthesia, (a type of sequence-space synesthesia) involving her thinking about years and months of the year in a set spatial arrangement. It appears that neither Price nor the researchers were aware that this is synaesthesia, or at least a mental phenomenon that has long been known to science. Sequence-space synesthesia was described, discussed and illustrated by Victorian polymath Sir Francis Galton on pages 80-103 of his 1883 book Inquiries Into Human Faculty and its Development, which can be read online at no cost. Galton named this phenomenon “number forms”. Synaesthesia researchers have accepted in recent years that this is a type of synesthesia. A number of different terms have been used for this phenomenon by scientists: number form, time lines, visuo-spatial synaesthesia. Synesthesia researcher David Eagleman has proposed the term "sequence-space synaesthesia" as a logical standard term (Simner 2009). Sir Francis Galton asserted that having number forms is hereditary and estimated that it affects “about 1 out of every 30 adult males or 15 females.” Research papers published in recent years suggest that number forms/sequence-space syaesthesia is experienced by something like 12% of the population with roughly equal representation in both sexes.

In the November-December 2009 issue of Cortex a paper was published written by researchers from British universities which examined time-space synaesthesia in a study of ten time-space synesthetes. Time-space synaesthesia is a sub-type of sequence-space synesthesia in which the synaesthete "sees" time sequences, such as days of the week or centuries in a millennia, in an unchanging spatial array. This paper also includes discussion of hyperthymestic syndrome, savantism, AJ (Jill Price) and DT (Daniel Tammet). Similarities between Tammet and Price were noted, and similarities and differences between the synaesthete study subjects and Price were also noted. The authors of the paper suggested an explanation of the basis of hyperthymestic syndrome - it is caused by a combination of time-space synaesthesia and "obsessive tendencies". In my opinion the idea that time-space synaesthesia is an essential requisite for hyperthymestic syndrome is most likely correct, but I do not believe that the explanation of "obsessive tendencies" explains why Price claims that her remembering is like having a split screen inside her head, and this explanation also fails to explain why Price finds her remembering to be nonstop, uncontrollable, and often automatic. Synaesthesia is uncontrollable and automatic, and if synaesthesia is being triggered constantly by frequently occurring triggering stimuli or inducers, then presumably it would also be constant. As a synaesthete myself I know that the experience of synaesthesia can be a lot like viewing a split screen - one screen showing normal vision from the world around, and another screen showing synaesthetic visions appearing spontaneously inside the mind. Synaesthesia researchers know that synaesthetes often have a number of different types of synaesthesia. I believe that Jill Price has at least two different types of synaesthesia - the time-space type and some other type that is unknown to researchers that has memories as the triggered synaesthetic experiences or concurrents. Price has reported numerous times in media interviews and in her own book that she finds her constant remembering to be a burden. Some synaesthesia researchers have reported that stimulant drugs such as amphetamine can suppress synaesthesia (Cytowic 1993 p.140) (Roberston & Sagiv 2005). This potential form of treatment for Price's involuntary remembering should be investigated by professional researchers. There are (at least) two other cases of hyperthymestic syndrome who have been reported by the media. In my opinion these people (men) should be the subject of scientific inquiries to ascertain if they have any type of synaesthesia.

It has recently been reported that MRI scans have been done of Price’s brain and have found “unusual structural qualities”. Price is right-handed, confirmed by researchers using the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory, but they also found indications of “anomalous lateralization”. Price has a left-handed brother and the two other identified (male) cases of hyperthymestic syndrome are left-handed, R-H, M.

Pythagoras of Samos c. 570 - 495 BC, Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician and founder of a religious movement, best known for the Pythagorean Theorem. In their 2009 book Wednesday is indigo blue synesthesia researchers Richard Cytowic and David Eagleman reported that Pythagoras had “number -> personality synesthesia” or ordinal linguistic personification (OLP). This is based on information on page 35 of the book The philosophers of Greece by historian Robert Brumbaugh which can be read through Google Books. For Pythagoras each number had its own personality and a gender. M?

Joachim Raff 1822-1882, Swiss composer, pianist and teacher. Raff was largely self-taught as a musician. A very prolific composer and well-known in his day.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov 1844-1908, Russian composer. He showed a precocious musical talent which his family did not appreciate. In his forties he was given a diagnosis of neurasthenia, following a particularly difficult time in his family life. This episode of ill health had a serious impact on his career. Sean Day’s web site lists Rimsky-Korsakov as a synaesthete. Van Campen’s book The Hidden Sense includes an anecdote about Scriabin and Rimsky-Korsakov comparing their music-colour synaesthesia experiences triggered by a musical performance. Galeyev and Vanechkina wrote that Rimsky-Korsakov had “absolute pitch hearing”, and this is verified by a web site listing famous people with perfect pitch which quotes from an autobiographical book. Galeyev and Vanechkina’s paper also shows Rimsky-Korsakov’s scheme of coloured tones, and the authors describe Rimsky-Korsakov’s set of associations as more natural and spontaneous than Scriabin’s set of coloured tone associations, P-P. M.

John Lewis Roget 1828–1908, lawyer, visual artist, co-author of Roget’s Thesaurus and son of Peter Mark Roget FRS who was a British physician, lexicographer, natural theologian, lecturer and inventor, but was best known as the original author of the Thesaurus of English words and phrases (Roget’s Thesaurus). Peter Mark Roget had an obsession with compiling lists from the age of 8. He was also obsessed with classifying. John Roget has been described as a “classifying and arranging machine” (Kendall quoted in Cowen 2009). Peter Mark Roget’s biographer Joshua Kendall has argued that Peter Mark Roget's list-making was a strategy to ward off depression, but other writers have argued that Asperger syndrome is a more likely explanation (Cowen 2009, McGrath 2008). It has also been argued that Peter Mark Roget had OCD, and there appears to have been a history of depression in his family. After Peter Mark Roget’s death, work on the thesaurus was continued by his son John Lewis Roget and John’s son Samuel Romilly Roget, an engineer. In an 1881 paper by Sir Francis Galton FRS about “visualised numerals” which is now known as visuo-spatial synaesthesia, John Roget is one of the men of science who see “numerals in Forms” whose experiences were described by Galton. Synaesthesia and Asperger syndrome are two conditions that run in families and sometimes co-occur. M.

Geoffrey Rush b.1951 Australian actor and film producer, winner of an Academy Award, a Tony Award and an Emmy Award, founding President of the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts, and the Australian of the Year 2012. Rush is famous for his roles in the movies The King's Speech, Pirates of the Carribean and in the interesting role of pianist David Helfgott in the movie Shine, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor. In a 2007 interview article published in The (Sydney) Sun-Herald by David Astle Rush claimed to have the type of synaesthesia in which things learned in a sequence have colours, such as numbers and days of the week, which he traced back to the age of seven. Rush described some of the colours of his days of the week. In a 2012 article in The Age about upcoming Melbourne Symphony Orchestra concerts it is revealed that Rush experiences visual images, shapes and colours in response to music. M. R-H.

Jani (January) Schofield b. 2002, Jani is a young intellectually gifted Californian girl who has been given the diagnosis of "child-onset schizophrenia" by a psychiatrist at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), but has not responded to treatment, and she is also at the centre of a media circus. Jani has been featured on the Oprah TV show, has appeared on ABC News’ 20/20 TV show and Australian 60 Minutes, and has also been featured in a number of articles in the Los Angeles Times. Jani’s parents have a website recounting Jani’s life in detail, which solicits for donations for Jani. Her father has been commissioned to write a book about Jani. Jani reportedly has an IQ of 146, but has never attended a normal classroom for any length of time. Jani has been institutionalized seven times in psychiatric hospitals.

Jani has been described by the media and her parents as suicidal and violent, but she can reportedly behave well and show stability when doing things that she enjoys, such as when people engage her in mental stimulation. Jani displays tics and flaps her hands, but a diagnosis of autism or Asperger syndrome has reportedly been considered but rejected by clinicians.

Jani's diagnosis of child-onset schizophrenia appears to be based upon the fantasy/imaginary/delusional world that Jani enjoys living in a lot of the time. Jani even has a name for this place - the island of Calalini. Jani claims to have many strange friends (who only exist in her mind), who reportedly bite and scratch her. In her earlier years these “friends” took the form of rats, cats and playmates with names that unaccountably were units of measurement, numbers or items that belong in learned linear sequences. For example, Jani’s imaginary friends included rats named Wednesday, 200 and Saturn, a cat named 61, and girls named 100 degrees and 24 hours. In December 2009 it was reported that Jani’s “hallucinations” are now personified numbers. This would appear to be a clear case of ordinal-linguistic personification (OLP), which is a form of synesthesia/synaesthesia in which items that are learned in ordered sequences are associated with specific personalities. Synesthesia is a generally harmless neurological condition. The December 2009 Los Angeles Times article contains a hint that Jani’s “hallucinations” display a consistency that is the hallmark of genuine synesthesia “She told me her hallucinations always wear the same clothes.” Another hint that Jani experiences OLP is her violent objection to being called by her full first name. Jani reportedly hates the name "January". Is this because her OLP associations with this month of the year clash with her self-image, or are simply not liked by her? Synesthesia is an inherited condition. One has to wonder at the coincidence in which a child who appears to have OLP has been given a month of the year for a first name.

One could possibly argue that Jani does not have OLP because the personification of her imaginary companions goes beyond the limits of the typically reported experience of OLP – Jani’s companions reportedly talk to her, move and even bite her. It is hard to judge whether Jani’s accounts are a combination of OLP and imagination, or could possibly be confabulation to explain a confusing experience of OLP juxtaposed with other neurological conditions or sensory types of synesthesia. According to the Jani’s Journey website Jani “experiences hallucinations in four of her five senses.” Another possible difference between Jani’s experiences and OLP is that Jani’s personifications have involved animals, while I am not aware of any report of OLP that does not involve human-like personifications. Whatever the case, I have read no explanation of why Jani’s mind has always been so extremely occupied with items that belong in learned linear sequences, while a number of different types of synesthesia (spatial, OLP, colours) do involve items that belong in learned linear sequences, such as days of the week, numbers, degrees, months of the year etc. Reported experiences of synesthesia could easily be mistaken as hallucination or delusion or psychosis by non-synesthetes who do not know what synesthesia is. Synesthesia appears to be the most comprehensive explanation for Jani’s “hallucinations”.

In December 2009 the Los Angeles Times reported that Jani still experiences her “hallucinations” frequently, even though she has been medicated with some of the most powerful anti-schizophrenia drugs (and a bipolar drug as well, just to be sure).
Alexander Scriabin (surname sometimes spelt Skriabin or Skryabin) 1872-1915, Russian composer and pianist. Scriabin developed an idiosyncratic tonal language in his music. As a child he was shy, controlling and unsociable with his peers. He had a fascination with the mechanical side of pianos and he built pianos. Scriabin’s childhood has interesting similarities with the philosopher Wittgenstein’s boyhood, in which the strange and isolated boy built a working sewing machine at the age of 10. Wittgenstein is also in this list. Scriabin has been described as a hypochondriac.

A simulation of synaesthesia was explicitly used as an artistic effect in Scriabin’s 1922 symphony Prometheus, the Poem of Fire. Scriabin definitely used synaesthesia effects in his composition, but did he have the condition himself? Expert opinions tend to favour a negative answer. Cytowic appears to accept Scriabin as a synaesthete in his book The Man Who Tasted Shapes, but in the second edition of his other book Synesthesia: a union of the senses, Cytowic lists Scriabin's Prometheus and Mysterium as works derived from contrived synaesthetic experiences. Van Campen wrote in 2008 that he finds it difficult to judge whether Scriabin was a synaesthete, but he argued in a 1997 paper that he was. Sean Day categorizes Scriabin as a psuedosynaesthete. In his book Synaesthesia: the strangest thing, John Harrison argued that Scriabin was not a genuine synaesthete, based on information from a 1914 synaesthesia case study by an English psychologist, Charles S. Myers, who interviewed Scriabin. I have read Myer's paper in the British Journal of Psychology. Myers' investigation was compromised by a time limit and the use of a language (French) that was a second language to both Myers and Scriabin. A description of Scriabin's music-colour associations, and also a musical key- smell association and two musical key-concept associations, are given on pages 114-115. The associations described seem to me to be possibly genuine synaesthesia, but I am happy to admit that I don't fully understand much of the paper due to my very limited knowledge of music. Myers does not describe any re-testing of Scriabin's music-colour associations in this paper. Today's synaesthesia researchers use re-testing procedures to determine the reliability of reported synaesthesia associations, and a very high rate of reliability is taken as evidence for the genuineness of cases of synaesthesia. Sadly, it appears that Myers was not able to conduct any such testing procedure on Scriabin.

Depictions of Scriabin’s associations between colours and musical keys can be viewed at Sean Day’s web site and also in Galeyev and Vanechkina’s article about Scriabin and synaesthesia. These associations are set out in arrangements that look somewhat like rainbow spectrums. I do not know if these patterns are the way writers have chosen to depict the associations, or reflect something more fundamental about what is described. I would not have thought that genuine neurological synaesthesia associations between a set sequence of items and colours would result in a rainbow pattern. This certainly does not happen in grapheme-colour synaesthesia. Scriabin's colour-music associations can also be seen in a "color-scale chart complied by Fred Collopy" on page 213 of the book Visual music. Scriabin's coloured notes are shown beside those of other people, and Scriabin's appear to be the least contrived and rainbow-like. Even if Scriabin's associations are partly contrived, this is not proof that Scriabin had no synaesthesia at all. It is possible that he had some genuine synaesthesia associations between musical sounds and colours, to which he added invented associations. A quote from the article by Galeyev and Vanechkina suggests that this is true “"The three clear to me colors gave me three bearings",- said he, confessing that the rest of the colors are derived by him "theoretically"”. According to Van Campen, Scriabin had two different key-colour schemes, one a personal scheme of associations and the other a universal one. I think this indicates that synaesthesia was for Scriabin both a personal experience and an aesthetic, creative idea. According to Galeyev and Vanechkina several different sets of associations between notes and colours written by Scriabin can be found in the Scriabin Museum. Van Campen lists three ways in which Scriabin claimed that colour played a role in his perception of music. One is in relation to emotion – the saturation of the colour evoked by music intensified with any increase in his feeling for the music. My own experience of coloured-music synaesthesia also follows this pattern. Van Campen’s book includes an anecdote about Scriabin and Rimsky-Korsakov comparing their music-colour synaesthesia experiences triggered by a musical performance. Galeyev and Vanechkina wrote that Rimsky-Korsakov had “absolute pitch hearing” while Scriabin had relative pitch hearing. M.

Solomon V. Shereshevskii 1886-1958?, also known as “S”, "Shereshevsky", "Sherashevsky", “Sheresevsky”, “Cherechevski” and “Veniamin”, Russian Jewish journalist, professional mnemonist (memory feat performer) in a stage show and the subject of the classic case study The Mind of a Mnemonist: a Little Book About a Vast Memory by Russian neuropsychologist Alexander R. Luria (Luriia), Shereshevskii’s extraordinary eidetic memory is thought to have been aided by his synaesthesia, of which he had a number of different types including projector-type synaesthesia. Shereshevskii was a vividly visual thinker but he reported trouble remembering faces. It is important to note that it is far from clear from the scant second-hand description of Shereshevskii's experience of face perception whether his experience was like that of a prosopagnosic (person with a face recognition disability) or typical of normal face perception, and scientific tests of face recognition did not exist in the age in which his case was explored. On page 127 Shereskevskii describes imagining "...a face familiar to me from childhood" and his rrecollectionis from his infancy include seeing his mother's face and recognizing his father's voice (p. 78). Shereshevskii was not blind to facial expressions, as some commentators have claimed, in fact he reported that facial expressions interfered with his ability to remember faces (p. 64 1987 HUP edition). His parents may have had unusual memory abilities and Luria described some of his siblings as "gifted individuals" (Luria 1968). Shereshevskii’s amazing mind has been discussed in relation to Asperger syndrome in a book and in a journal paper (Wilding & Valentine 1997, Wing 1981). Shereshevskii “seemed to have behaved not unlike someone with Asperger syndrome. Unfortunately, Luria did not give enough details to allow a diagnosis to be made” according to Asperger syndrome expert Lorna Wing (Wing 1981), M, A.

Jean Sibelius 1865-1957, Finnish composer. P-P, M.

Sting CBE b. 1951 named Gordon Sumner, British musician, activist, philanthropist and actor. Sting became famous as a songwriter, lead singer and bassist in the 70s-80s rock band The Police. Sting has had a successful solo career in music. In total Sting has been awarded sixteen Grammy Awards. Sting’s net wealth has been estimated at $362.8 million.

The 2009 Canadian documentary The Musical Brain was broadcast in Australia on SBS1 on January 12th 2010. It is about the relationship between music and the human brain. It shows a neuroscientist from McGill University studying Sting’s brain using brain scanning technology. At around 53 minutes into the documentary it is found that when Sting was imagining music the strongest activation in his brain was found in the visual cortex. The scientist asked Sting about this, inquiring whether metaphorical thinking was the cause of this interesting finding. Sting identified the music of Bach as some of his favourite music and observed “When I listen to Bach I hear architecture ... chambers ... towers ... buttresses ... domes ...” I could find no mention of synaesthesia in this documentary, but clearly that is what Sting had described. M, R-H?

Patrick Stump b. 1984, American singer-songwriter, record producer, music critic and member of the pop-punk band Fall Out Boy. Read about Patrick Stump's grapheme-colour synaesthesia at the Wikipedia's List of people with synesthesia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_synesthesia#Patrick_StumpTilda Swinton b. 1960, full name Katherine Mathilda Swinton, British actress who has appeared in both mainstream and arthouse movies, winner of an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2007. Swinton has a degree from Cambridge and two honorary doctorates. Swinton has two partners, both painters, one that she lives with and has children with and one that she travels with. In an interview published in the Sunday Times in 2010 Swinton described flavoured words (gustatory) synaesthesia which she experienced during her childhood. M.

Daniel Tammet b.1979, born Daniel Corney and changed his surname in 2001 (Foer 2011) by deed poll reportedly because it did not fit his self-image (Johnson 2005). DT is the anonymous name given to Tammet when he is written about as a case study in science journal papers. Tammet is most famous as a well-presented autistic synaesthete mathematics, memory and language savant who writes autobiographies. Tammet has created and operates an online educational company, and has a background in teaching English as a second language (Tammet 2006). In 1999 and 2000 Tammet competed in the World Memory Championships (WMC) (under his original surname), attaining a rating of fourth in the world in 2000 (Foer 2011 p.219). Tammet's WMC achievements include winning a gold medal in the "names and faces" event (Foer 2011 p.230). In 2001 Tammet was describing himself as a “World-class mentathlete, memory sport pioneer, personal empowerment coach, spiritual development teacher and speaker and a leading authority on Mindpower and Human Potential” at the website that he published at the time: www.DanielTämmet.com In 2001 Tammet changed his surname from Corney. In that year he also made an important move by appointing the publicity company KBC Media to represent him with the aim of making him famous. "A documentary, international media, and then a book" was identified as a career plan for Tammet. In 2002 Tammet was one subject in a study of a group of WMC participants by Maguire et al which found that their memory superiority was not driven by exceptional intellectual ability or structural brain differences differences but was instead due to "a spatial learning strategy". Tammet and other “superior memorizers” were tested for face memory. As a group their performance was superior but comparable to the controls. I found no mention of synaesthesia in that paper, published in the prestigious journal Nature Neuroscience in 2002-3. In 2004 Tammet reportedly became the holder of the British/European record (under his new surname) for remembering and recounting the number Pi to 22,514 decimal places, an event held to raise money for a charity, but according to the “Pi World Ranking List” website, Tammet made an error at 2,964 decimal places limiting his record to that lower figure.

Being featured in the award-winning documentary Brainman (alternative title The Boy with the Incredible Brain) appears to have been a turning point for Tammet. Tammet met Dr Darold Treffert “in the summer of 2004, during filming for the documentary Brainman” (foreword by Tammet of Treffert 2010). Treffert is considered to be an authority on “savant syndrome”, and he told Tammet he met the diagnostic criteria for the condition (Tammet 2006, p. 236). Tammet was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome (AS) at age 25 at the Autism Research Centre (ARC) (Tammet 2006, p.6) and his consultation with Prof. Simon Baron-Cohen of the ARC, considered a leading authority on autism, was shown in the Brainman documentary. Tammet was also examined by the US neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran and his research team in the documentary, and they wrote a short paper about Tammet. In 2005 two popular UK press articles were published reviewing the Brainman doco broadcast on UK television, both including claims that Tammet can “recall the face of every person he has ever met” (Bletchley 2005). In 2006 Tammet’s first autobiography Born on a Blue Day was published, and Baron-Cohen and Treffert both wrote forewords for it. In 2007 two journal papers about Tammet, both by Baron-Cohen and co-authors, were published in different science journals. One of these papers explained that Tammet was given a test of face memory and it was concluded that “...his face memory appears impaired...” (Baron-Cohen et al 2007). Both 2007 papers mentioned Tammet’s Pi record (reported as a European record to 22,514 places) under his new name but did not mention his WMC participation under his old name which included the “names & faces” task. In his 2009 autobiography Embracing the Wide Sky Tammet claimed that “...I have great difficulty remembering faces, even of those of people I have known for many years” (Tammet 2009 p.61) and he then discussed his perception of faces in a way that is eerily similar to the way that the famous synaesthete memory savant Shereshevskii’s perception of faces was described in the classic case study by Luria The Mind of a Mnemonist (Luria 1987 edition p. 64).

A centrally important feature of the explanation for Tammet's memory feats that has been put forward by Tammet, Baron-Cohen, Treffert, the Brainman documentary and many media reports is that Tammet's performances of superior memory are claimed to be effortless and the result of inborn neurological differnces such as autism, synaesthesia and the after-effects of an epileptic childhood, and are not the result of mnemonic techniques or memory training as practiced by memory competition participants. One of the 2007 papers about Tammet by Baron-Cohen and his research team included the assertion that "While some memory experts accomplish similar feats after extensive training, this does not explain DT's abilities, since he has had no explicit training." (Bor, Billington & Baron-Cohen 2007).

Doubts have been raised about Tammet's savantism, synaesthesia and his claimed severe disability in recognizing faces (prosopagnosia). Much of what has been written about Tammet fails to mention his World Memory Championship achievements in 1999 and 2000, his 2001 name change or his participation in the 2002 study of memory contest participants. In the 2011 book Moonwalking With Einstein by WMC champion Joshua Foer, Foer explores the argument that Tammet's achievements are due to well-known memory training techniques and not savantism, synaesthesia, autism or any other inborn peculiarity.

Tammet was reportedly diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy during childhood (Tammet 2006 p.35), and had a paternal grandfather whose life was ruined by adult-onset epilepsy (Tammet 2006 p.36-37). Tammet has a brother who is also diagnosed with AS (Tammet 2006 p.13) (Baron-Cohen et al 2007 p.8). In his first autobiography Tammet described his father’s curiously unnamed mental illness involving physical collapse which had an onset well into adulthood (Tammet 2006 p.99-102), but I found no mention of schizophrenia in this book. In his second autobiography Tammet identified his father as a long-time sufferer of schizophrenia, and one of the 2007 journal papers about Tammet includes a claim that his father has diagnosed with schizophrenia (Baron-Cohen et al 2007). Tammet has claimed to have a WAIS IQ score of 150 (Tammet 2009). He also reportedly has vivid synaesthesia, speaks 11 languages and is creating a new language, has trouble telling left from right, and cannot drive a motor vehicle (Tammet 2006). In the book Born on a Blue Day Tammet identified himself as a Christian in a long term same-sex relationship, and in a 2009 interview Tammet explained that they had parted amicably and he was now with a new partner (Wilson 2009). In his foreword to the 2010 book Islands of Genius by Darold Treffert, Tammet wrote that he was currently working on a novel. R-H, H, M, A.

Sabriye Tenberken b. 1970, German social worker and co-founder of the organization Braille Without Borders. Tenberken became completely blind by the age of 13. Tenberken has been given an impressive collection of honours and awards.

Nikola Tesla 1856-1943, Serbian-American inventor, electrical and mechanical engineer and physicist, regarded as America’s greatest electrical engineer, alternating current electric power systems are the result of Tesla’s ideas and Tesla also filed the first basic radio patent. Tesla described his synaesthesia and other unusual psychological experiences in the beginning of his book My Inventions. On page 17 he wrote “When I drop little squares of paper in a dish filled with liquid, I always sense a peculiar and awful taste in my mouth.” (Tesla 1977 translation). Strange as this may sound, synaesthesia triggers can be this odd and specific. Other most unusual involuntary sensory experiences described in this book may also have been visual synaesthesia of the projector type, and Tesla claimed that his brother had similar experiences. Scientists have confirmed that synaesthesia is a gene-based condition that often runs in families. Tesla was certainly not the only brilliant or eccentric person in his family. Tesla had a “nervous breakdown” in his early twenties. By his account this consisted of extreme sensory hypersensitivity, heart problems and bodily twitches and tremors in response to nervous strain. Tesla had an eidetic memory, sensory aversions and hypersensitivity, was a highly visual thinker and could speak in eight languages. He was celibate and never married but had friends, died alone in a hotel in a state of indebtedness after losing scientific credibility because of his odd personality, eccentric ideas and symptoms suggestive of OCD that developed in his late 50s, born left-handed but became ambidextrous, a true eccentric regarded as a hero by other eccentrics, one biography apparently asserted that Tesla was a superior being from the planet Venus (Pickover 1998), L-H, A.

Michael Torke b. 1961, US composer with a style that is influenced by minimalism and jazz. Torke experiences coloured years, months, days, letters and sounds. Synaesthesia is an influence on his composing, but is not an essential requirement for appreciating his music. A detailed description of Torke’s synesthesia can be found in the excellent and interesting chapter about synaesthesia in Oliver Sack’s book Musicophilia. Torke displayed striking musical talent fro an early age, composing music at the age of 5. Torke has absolute pitch (perfect pitch). P-P.

Alex Van Halen b. 1953, Dutch-American drummer in the rock band Van Halen. His guitarist brother Eddie Van Halen is creditied with creating what is known as the “brown sound” using a particular type of guitar and other items of musical technology, but a quote taken from an unreferenced rock magazine in Paul Collins’ book Not Even Wrong suggests that it is Alex Van Halen who has the synaesthesia that connects this distinctive sound with the colour brown; “I don’t compare it to brown, it is brown.” (Alex Van Halen quoted by Collins p. 129). Alex originally coined the term “brown sound” to refer to the sound of his snare drum. Eddie Van Halen’s explanation of the brown sound, in a Guitar World interview quoted in the Wikipedia, is vague and does not suggest synaesthesia: "basically a tone, a feeling that I'm always working at... It comes from the person." Both brothers were trained as classical pianists when they were children. M.

Richard Wagner (full name Wilhelm Richard Wagner)1813-1883 German composer, theatre director, conductor and essayist, most famous for his operas. It appears that Wagner liked to exercise great control over the creative process - he wrote the librettos and scenarios for his operas and built his own opera house. Wagner started writing his first opera at the age of 13. Wagner proposed the idea of a synthesis of the musical, visual, poetic and dramatic arts "gesamtkunstwerk". In an essay in the book Visual music, Olivia Mattis has claimed that synaesthete composer Olivier Messiaen has claimed that Wagner understood intuitively the relationship between light and music, with evidence from Wagner's operas cited. I don't know whether Wagner's intuition was genuine neurological synaesthesia or was even claimed to be synaesthesia. In her book Tasting the Universe Mareen Seaberg recounted an anecdote in which Wagner stormed off a stage because the colours of the set did not match the colours of the score of Tristan and Isolde, which is surely the type of behaviour that would only be expected of a perfectionist synaesthete (p.179-180). Wagner is remembered by some for his negative views regarding Jews, even though he had Jewish friends. Wagner described Jewish musicians as an alien influence on German culture. Wagner's private life was also memorable. Wagner fathered an illegitimate child with Cosima, the illegitimate daughter of his synaesthete composer friend Franz Liszt, who was 24 years his junior and married to someone else at the time. They married later, Wagner's second marriage. Wagner was apparently obsessed with perfume (Gilbert 2008), and needed to wear silk next to his skin (Higgins 2007), sensory traits that could possibly be linked to synaesthesia or Asperger syndrome. M.
Opal Irene Whiteley 1897-1992, also known by the names Opal Stanley Whiteley, Princesse Francoise d’Orleans and Francoise Marie de Bourbon-Orleans, a nature writer and a diarist who was raised in Oregon logging camps. During her time and today Whiteley is a mysterious, strange, legendary and romanticised figure. She became internationally famous when her childhood diary was published when she was in her 20s and became a bestseller. I have written about Opal Whiteley and her synaesthesia and some other famous and fascinating synesthetes in my new book, which can be downloaded from its page at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/236446

Pharrell Williams b. 1973, American singer-songwriter, music producer, rapper, and lead singer and drummer of rock band N.E.R.D., a co-winner of Grammy Awards.
Read about Pharrell Williams and synaesthesia at the Wikipedia's List of People With Synesthesiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_synesthesia

Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889–1951, Austrian philosopher and academic, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. Wittgenstein was very late in his speech development, not speaking well until after his 4th birthday (Gillberg 2002). Wittgenstein was educated at home until the age of 14, and he built a working sewing machine at the age of 10. He was a strange, shy boy who stuttered and was bullied at school. As an adult he studied engineering then mathematics then philosophy, later a professor of philosophy at Cambridge. He is described as having inherited dyslexia and “well read” by Ioan James, described as a bad speller by Gillberg. According to the Wikipedia Wittgenstein had perfect pitch, citing a book as the source of this information. Wittgenstein was predominantly homosexual, and one of the three of his siblings who committed suicide was most likely also a male homosexual. A translated note from one of Wittgenstein’s published works indicates that he either had grapheme-colour synaesthesia or knew of the condition; “It’s just like the way some people do not understand the question “What color has the vowel A for you?””(Ward 2008 p. 11). P-P, H, A.

Virginia Woolf 1882-1941, full name Adeline Virginia Woolf, English author, publisher, essayist and major 20th century Modernist literary figure. She was a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Woolf suffered from depression and some have argued that she was a victim of childhood sexual abuse. She has been identified as a synaesthete with an eidetic memory by the synaesthesia researcher and neurologist Richard Cytowic, in a 2012 article in Seed magazine: http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/many_minds_one_story/
M.

Famous – I included people in this list who either I have heard of or who retrieved at least 20,000 hits when Googled by name.

Male – There are many notable women who have synaesthesia, but my own judgement of which are the most famous synaesthetes selected mostly male ones.

Composers - 15 out of
Songwriters - 11 out of , combined composers and songwriters are around half of the total names on list.

Have/had perfect pitch/absolute pitch – Beethoven, Beach, Torke, Hendrix, Messiaen, Sibelius, Rimsky-Korsakov, Wittgenstein, possibly Liszt. One academic paper claims that the overall prevalence of perfect pitch in the US culture is less than one in ten thousand (Deutsch 2006), so it appears that people with this ability are hugely over-represented in this list. But it is worth noting that just a few years ago synaesthesia was also thought to be a rare condition, but researchers have since found that this isn’t so. Some anecdotal evidence suggests that perfect pitch is not such a rare trait among musically talented people. It is possible that perfect pitch ability is over-represented in this list simply because it is a list of high-achievers, including musical high achievers. It is thought that people who speak a tonal language, who have Williams Syndrome or who are on the autistic spectrum are more likely to have perfect pitch.

A prodigy or precocious talent as a child – Beethoven, Torke, Amy Beach, Rimsky-Korsakov, Grimaud, Whiteley, Lady Gaga, Evatt? also there is a pattern of early interest and self-teaching among some of the musicians in this list.

Able to speak or communicate in more than two languages – Tammet, Nabokov, Tesla, van Gogh, Grimaud?, Tenberken?

Dyslexic – Wittgenstein?

Left-hander or originally left-handed – Lady Gaga, Tesla, Hendrix, McCartney, Feynman? Beethoven? The handedness of most people in list not known, and based on this limited information it is not possible to identify or disprove any unusual patterns of handedness in this group of synesthetes. According to synaesthesia researcher Jamie Ward, the idea of an association between synaesthesia and left-handedness is a myth (Ward 2008 p. 112). About 8-15% of people are left-handed. Apparently males are more likely to be left-handed, so the handedness of the group as a whole would be influenced by any uneven sex ratio.

Right-hander – Price, Tammet, and Nabokov, Bernstein, Evatt and Ligeti all photographed writing with right hand.

Very late to start speaking in early development – Feynman, Wittgenstein.

Formally diagnosed with Asperger syndrome – Tammet (one person in a group of 53). The prevalence of Asperger syndrome has been estimated at 0.3 per 1000, so I think that means if this list were representative of the general population we should expect to find .0141 people with a diagnosis of AS in it (how is my maths?)

Identified as a possible case of autism or Asperger syndrome during their life – Schofield

Posthumously diagnosed or identified as having had Asperger syndrome or some other autistic condition – Wittgenstein, van Gogh, Beethoven, Tesla, Whiteley. The prevalence of Autistic Spectrum Conditions (including Asperger syndrome) has been estimated at 6.0 to 6.5 per 1000.

First-degree relative of someone who has been posthumously identified as a possible case of Asperger syndrome – John Lewis Roget

Total possible or definite autists – ..... Autistic or possibly autistic people appear to be hugely over-represented in this list, and there are also some other people on this list who display traits that could be described as autistic.

Eccentrics – Evatt, Hockney, Nabokov, Poe, Tesla, Barrett, Whiteley, Lady Gaga, Feynman?, Price?, Grimaud? and most of those identified as autistic. There’s a whole lot of eccentricity and originality in this list!

Development possibly influenced by unusual levels of hormones - Franz Liszt's long ring finger might possibly be evidence of exposure to unusual levels of prenatal testosterone. Autism, dyslexia, left-handedness and homosexuality are some conditions found in others in this list, that are thought by some scientists to be possibly influenced by prenatal exposure to unusual levels of hormones.
Married – most have been married.

Savant – Tammet, Whiteley? Shereshevskii?, Price?

Extraordinary or eidetic memory (of any type of memory) – Shereshevskii, Tammet, Price, Nabokov, Whiteley, Evatt. I recall that one or both of Tesla's parents apparently displayed remarkable memory abilities.

Very good or extraordinary autobiographical memory – Price, Nabokov.

Homosexual or bisexual people – Hockney, Fry, Bernstein, Tammet, Wittgenstein, Hendrix? Lady Gaga? - 4 appear to fall clearly into the homosexual category. The rate at which predominantly homosexual people are found in the general population has been estimated at 2%-7%, with male homosexuals somewhat more common and lesbians less commonly found. Male homosexuals appear to be slightly over-represented in this list. Of course, there could be some that I don't know about, and it's probably none of my damn business anyway. While synaesthete Vladimir Nabokov was not homosexual, there seems to be something interesting in his family history involving stuttering and homosexuality. Ludwig Wittgenstein, who is also in this list and like Nabokov came from an aristocratic and intellectual European family, was a homosexual with a stutter, and it appears that one of Wittgenstein's brothers was also a homosexual.

Non-drivers – Nabokov, Tammet, Evatt? and there is another person in this list who is a driver but who had to take a driving test twice while renewing a licence. I do not know whether non-drivers are over-represented in this list as I have not found any statistics about what proportion of the general adult population are non-drivers. Some cognitive peculiarities that have anecdotally been associated with synaesthesia include: being unable to tell left from right, poor sense of direction, poor coordination and poor balance.

Epileptics - Tammet in childhood, possibly Evatt.

Hearing loss with an onset in adulthood – 2 people in this list (Hockney and Beethoven).
Wrote a controversial novelor song – Nabokov wrote the novel Lolita, Eleanor Dark wrote the novel Prelude to Christopher, Julie Myerson wrote the novel The Lost Child, and Syd Barrett wrote the song Arnold Layne which was once banned from airplay by Radio London.

Has/had a history of attacking ears – at least 2.

References and sourcesAbout synaesthesia, or about psychology with some info about synaesthesia

Cytowic, Richard and Eagleman, David (2009) Wednesday is indigo blue: discovering the brain of synesthesia. MIT Press, 2009.
[This is a most informative and enjoyable recent book by two US researchers which I would recommend to anyone who wants to learn about synaesthesia. This book has many coloured illustrations and diagrams. Pythagoras, David Hockney, Nabokov, Kandinsky, Messiaen, Franz Liszt, Solomon Shereshevskii (Sheresevsky, Shereshevsky, S), Baudelaire and other famous people discussed as synaesthetes or possible synaesthetes. Feynman's synaesthesia briefly described. Many living and dead famous musicians and composers identified as having coloured hearing on page 93. Scriabin and Georgia O'Keeffe described as "psuedo-synesthetes" on page 187 and the authors found no evidence to show that Joris-Karl Huysmans, Paul Klee, Roy De Maistre or Basho Matsuo had synaesthesia. Composer Alexander Laszlo is mentioned. This book includes a very interesting afterword by Dmitri Nabokov, son and literary executor of Vladimir Nabokov, in which he discusses his own synaesthesia and his late father's synaesthesia, which can be found on the internet in a separate document.]
Cytowic, Richard (2002) Synesthesia: a union of the senses. Second edition, MIT Press, 2002.
[David Hockney, Olivier Messiaen, Solomon Shereshevskii (S), and Nabokov discussed]
Cytowic, Richard (1993) The man who tasted shapes:a bizarre medical mystery offers revolutionary insights into emotions, reasoning, and consciousness. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1993. [Kandinsky, Scriabin and Rimbaud discussed] Day, Sean (accessed 2008) Synesthesia. [web site]
http://home.comcast.net/~sean.day/index.html[the primary source of information for this list]
Day, Sean A. (2001) A brief history of synaesthesia and music. Thereminvox.com February 21st 2001.
http://www.thereminvox.com/article/articleview/33/5/5/

Douglas, Ed (2011) Pitch perfect. New Scientist. Issue 2801 February 26th 2011 p.46-49.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928011.300-finely-tuned-minds-the-secret-of-perfect-pitch.html[An article about perfect pitch that speculates about why perfect pitch is associated with synaesthesia and autism.]
Eagleman, David (2009) Hearing colors, seeing sounds: the neuroscience, behaviour and genetics of synesthesia. Slow TV. July 2009.
http://www.themonthly.com.au/synesthesia-hearing-colours-tasting-sounds-david-eagleman-1826[A talk given in June 2009 of a lecture for the Centre for the Human Aspects of Science and Technology (CHAST) at the University of Sydney. Broadcast in two parts of around half an hour each since July 2009 on the internet by Slow TV. Includes some discussion about famous synaesthetes. Justin Chancellor of the rock band Tool identified as a synesthete in this talk.]Galton, Francis (1883) Inquiries into human faculty and its development.http://galton.org/books/human-faculty/[a wonderful wide-ranging and carefully illustrated work by the English Victorian polymath and scientific pioneer Sir Francis Galton FRS, that has been made available to read free of charge over the internet]

Harrison, J. (2001) Synaesthesia: the strangest thing. Oxford University Press, 2001.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=DC9_O3pzjh8C[Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Huysmans, Scriabin, Kandinsky, Messaien, Nabokov, Eisenstein, Basho Matsuo, Feynman and Hockney are discussed in this book which can be seen at Google Book Search]

Robertson, Lynn C. & Sagiv, Noam (editors) (2005) Synesthesia: Perspectives from Cognitive Neuroscience. Oxford University Press, 2005.
[Chapter 2 of this book by Sean Day identifies Tesla, Sibelius, Messiaen, Feynman, Hockney, Nabokov, Rimsky-Korsakov and other people as synaesthetes or possible synaesthetes, this book can be previewed on Google Book Search]
Robson, David (2009) Genetic roots of synaesthesia unearthed. New Scientist. February 5th 2009.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16537-genetic-roots-of-synaesthesia-unearthed.html

Sacks, Oliver (2008) Musicophilia: tales of music and the brain. (revised and expanded), Picador, 2008.
[Chapter 14 The key of clear green: synesthesia and music is really worth reading]

Seaberg, Maureen (2011) Tasting the universe: people who see colors in words and rainbows in symphonies: a spiritual and scientific exploration of synesthesia. New Page Books, 2011.
http://www.tastingtheuniverse.com/
[Author an American synaesthete journalist with an interest in spirituality. Famous people discussed and/or interviewed include Douglas Coupland*, Itzhak Perlman*, Pharrell Williams*, Sir Robert Cailliau*, Dame Evelyn Glennie*, Dr David Chalmers*, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Marilyn Monroe, Marian McPartland, Olivier Messiaen, Vincent van Gogh, Daniel Tammet, Ida Maria, Beethoven, Manu Katche and many others. A fascinating book for anyone with an interest in famous synaesthetes.]

Visual music: synaesthesia in art and music since 1900. (2005) organized by Kerry Brougher, Jeremy Strick, Ari Wiseman, and Judith Zilczer ; essay by Olivia Mattis. Thames & Hudson, 2005.
[A book based on an art exhibition by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. This exhibition, Visual Music, charted the influence of synaesthesia and musical analogies on the development of visual art from the early twentieth century to the present.]

Ward, Jamie (2008) The frog who croaked blue: synesthesia and the mixing of the senses. Routledge, 2008.
[I recommended this recent book by a leading UK synaesthesia researcher as an excellent introduction to the subject of synaesthesia. Nabokov, Feynman, Wittgenstein, Kandinsky, Hockney and Messiaen are mentioned as synaesthetes or possible synaesthetes.]
Wikipedia contributors (accessed 2008) List of people with synesthesia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php%20title=List_of_people_with_synesthesia&oldid=250221306

Yaro, Caroline and Ward, Jamie (2007) Searching for Shereshevskii: what is superior about the memory of synaesthetes? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. 2007 May;60(5):681-95.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17455076

Sinke, C. Passie, T. Neufeld, J. Emrich, H. & Zedler, M (2010)
Comparing drug-induced synaesthesia and genuine synaesthesia.http://www.uksynaesthesia.com/programme%20jan10.pdf[poster presentation to be presented at the March 2010 meeting of the UK Synaesthesia Association]
Sore, David (2006) The genius next door. Mail on Sunday. December 3rd 2006.
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-9311110/THE-GENIUS-NEXT-DOOR.html[I have not checked any complete online or hardcopy publication of this article from a British tabloid newspaper. I have only read republications and reviews of it online, and part of it available through a business article seller. I could find no trace of the article through searching Mail Online. It appears to be an unsympathetic account of Barrett's reclusive years by someone who claimed to have been his neighbour]
Titchmarsh, Ben (2007?) Rosemary shares memories of her brother and her hopes for ‘The City Wakes’. The City Wakes (web site).
http://www.thecitywakes.org.uk/syd_barrett_memories.htm[Synaesthesia is mentioned in this interview with Barrett's sister.]
Watkinson, Mike & Anderson, Pete (2006) Crazy diamond: Syd Barrett & the dawn of Pink Floyd. Omnibus Press, 2006.
[The authors subscribe to the theory that Barrett had schizophrenia. Parts of the 2001 edition of this book can be read at Google Book Search]Wikipedia contributors (accessed 2009) Syd Barrett. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Syd_Barrett&oldid=299269250Willis, Tim (2006) My lovably ordinary brother Syd. Sunday Times. Timesonline July 16th 2006.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article688189.ecehttp://www.sydbarrett.net/subpages/articles/ordiinary_brother.htm[autism and synaesthesia mentioned]
Willis, Tim (2002) Madcap : the half-life of Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's lost genius. Short Books, 2002.
[A short book but an enjoyable read, Asperger syndrome and synaesthesia mentioned, a report by Barrett of an experience of synaesthesia is described on page 21, and more evidence of synesthesia in a quote on page 106]
Willis, Tim (2002) You shone like the sun. Observer. Guardian.co.uk October 6th 2002.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/oct/06/biography.music[Asperger syndrome mentioned]
Willis, Tim (2002) Extracts from the Book "Madcap - the half-life of Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's lost Genius". Dolly Rocker (tribute web site).
http://pink-floyd.org/barrett/madcbarr.htm[Asperger syndrome mentioned]About Amy Beach
Day, Sean A. (2001) A brief history of synaesthesia and music. Thereminvox.com February 21st 2001.
http://www.thereminvox.com/article/articleview/33/5/5/Wikipedia contributors (accessed 2008) List of people with synesthesia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_people_with_synesthesia&oldid=250221306[gives information about Amy Beach and many other famous synesthetes, and quotes from biographies of Amy Beach]
About Ludwig van BeethovenDeutch, Diana (2006) The enigma of absolute pitch. Acoustics Today. 2006, 2, p.11-19.
http://philomel.com/pdf/Acoustics_Today_2006.pdf[Mozart’s perfect pitch described, also identifies Beethoven and other musicians as possessors of perfect pitch]
Fitzgerald, Michael (2005) The genesis of artistic creativity: Asperger’s syndrome and the arts. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.[Wittgenstein, Kant, Mozart, Beethoven, Satie, Bartok, Glenn Gould, van Gogh and other famous people in the arts identified as having autism or Asperger syndrome in this book]
Scholes, Percy A. & Ward, John Owen (editor) (1970) The Oxford companion to music. 10th edition. Oxford University Press, 1970.
[Beethoven’s possible synaesthesia mentioned on page 203 in the section about “Colour and music”]
Wright, Ed (2007) A left-handed history of the world. Pier 9 (Murdoch Books Pty Limited).
[“Left-handers have a disproportionate presence in the history of the world.” Some of the famous people written about in this book include Michelangelo, Newton, Beethoven, Lewis Carroll, Henry Ford, Marie Curie, Alan Turing and Bill Gates. Wright explains the evidence about Beethoven’s handedness on page 108.]About Leonard Bernstein
A reference to evidence of Bernstein’s synaesthesia can be found at Sean Day’s web site.

About H. V. "Doc" Evatt
Bolton, G. C., (1996) Evatt, Herbert Vere (Bert) (1894–1965). Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University.
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/evatt-herbert-vere-bert-10131/text17885
[This authoritative article was first published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 14, Melbourne University Press, 1996.]

“Doc”: a portrait of Herbert Vere Evatt 1894-1965. (director; Pat Fiske, producer; Denise Haslem, research, script and interviewer; Pat Fiske, David McKnight), Film Australia, 1995.
[Most interesting. Includes many interviews with people who knew the man. Covers Evatt’s international and Australian achievements, what he was like as a person, and his successful marriage. Available as a 57 minute VHS video of 57 minute DVD]

MacCallum, Mungo (1994) Australian political anecdotes. Oxford University Press, 1994.
[includes many anecdotes about Evatt]

Murray, Robert (1972) The split: Australian Labor in the fifties. 2nd edition, Cheshire, 1972.

Morgenstern, Sam (1956) Composers on music: an anthology of composers' writings from Palestrina to Copland. Pantheon books, 1956.
[I have not checked this book myself.]About Jimi Hendrix
Douglas, Ed (2011) Pitch perfect. New Scientist. Issue 2801 February 26th 2011 p.46-49.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928011.300-finely-tuned-minds-the-secret-of-perfect-pitch.html[An article about perfect pitch that speculates about why perfect pitch is associated with synaesthesia and autism. Text of caption on photo: “Jimi Hendrix’s talent may have been due to extra neural connections.”]
Wright, Ed (2007) A left-handed history of the world. Pier 9 (Murdoch Books Pty Limited), 2007.

About David Hockney
Cytowic, Richard (2002) Synesthesia: a union of the senses. Second edition, MIT Press, 2002.
[Hockney’s synaesthesia’s influence on his stage sets is described at length, including a trascript of an interview between Cytowic and Hockney]
Hockney, David & Stangos, Nikos (editor) (1993) That’s the way I see it. Chronicle Books, 1993.

About Siri Hustvedt
Hustvedt, Siri (2010) The shaking woman or a history of my nerves. Sceptre, 2010.
[Autobiographical book about the author’s search for an explanation for her mysterious bouts of involuntary violent shaking during public speaking. In this interesting but unstructured book Hustvedt described her varied synaesthesia experiences and many other neurological maladies and curiousities.]

Koval, Ramona (2010) The shaking woman. Book Show. Radio National ABC. 22 April 2010.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2010/2878610.htm
[Author Siri Hustvedt interviewed by Koval. I could find no mention of synaesthesia in this interview, which amazes me, because I think it is of central importance. Hustvedt appears to prefer to view her experiences more from Freudian and mental health perspectives than a neurological approach.]

Elder, Jennifer & Thomas, Marc (Illustrator) (2005) Different like me: my book of autism heroes. Jessica Kingsley, 2005.
[Kandinsky, Mondrian, Tesla and many other famous people are featured in this children’s book which was written by the mother of an autist and the wife of author Paul Collins. The chapter on Kandinsky includes as fanciful description of synaesthesia.] Gillberg, Christopher (2002) A guide to Asperger Syndrome. Cambridge University Press.
[Ludwig Wittgenstein, Einstein, Anton Bruckner, Erik Satie, Bela Bartok, Wassilij Kandinskij identified as possible or very likely cases of Asperger syndrome]
Ione, Amy & Tyler, Christopher (2003) Neurohistory and the arts: was Kandinsky a synesthete? Journal of the History of the Neurosciences. 2003, Vol. 12, No. 2, p. 223–226.
http://www.amyione.com/kand.pdf

Kandinsky, Nina (1947) Some notes on the development of Kandinsky’s painting. In:
Kandinsky, V. (editor) Concerning the Spiritual in Art and On Painting. Wittenborn Art Books, p. 9–11.
[I have not checked this book myself]
Maur, Karin von (1999) The sound of painting: music in modern art. Prestel, 1999.
[Maur wrote on page 30 that Kandinsky “was convinced that colours could be heard and himself possessed this gift in high degree,”]
Sweet, Matthew (1999) Was it all in the eye's ear? The Independent. independent.co.uk March 28th 1999.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/was-it-all-in-the-eyes-ear-1083467.html[Examines the arguments that Kandinsky was or was not a genuine synaesthete. Beware - this article is old and contains information about synaesthesia that recent research has shown to be incorrect, and it also gives a description of what synaesthesia is like that does not apply to all synaesthetes.]

About Paul KleeWeber, Nicholas Fox (2009) The Bauhaus group: six masters of modernism. Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.
[includes chapters about Klee and Kandinsky]
About Zoltan Kodaly
Cytowic, Richard (2002) Synesthesia: a union of the senses. Second edition, MIT Press, 2002.
[Kodaly identified as a genuine synaesthete on page 320]
About Gyorgi LigetiBenjamin, George (2007) In the realm of the senses. The Guardian. February 23rd 2007.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/feb/23/classicalmusicandopera1

About Olivier Messiaen
Bernard, J. (1986) Messiaen's synaesthesia, the correspondence between colour and sound structure in his music. Music Perception. 4, 1986. No. 1, p.41-68.
[I have not checked this reference]

A reference to another document describing Messiaen’s synaesthesia can be found at Sean Day’s web site, and Messiaen’s synaesthesia is apparently well documented in Messiaen’s writing, in interviews given and in biographies.

Albers, Patricia (2011) Joan Mitchell, Artist and Synesthete: Three Paintings. (abstract) Ninth Annual National Conference of the American Synesthesia Association. October 14 through October 16, 2011, University of California San Diego.
http://www.synesthesia.info/upcoming.html

There are also a number of videos about the controversy that can be viewed at YouTube, including an interview with Julie Myerson.

About Vladimir NabokovBanned books: Lolita. Time. 2008.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1842832_1842838_1845288,00.html
Grossman, Lev (2000) The gay Nabokov. Salon. May 17th 2000.
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2000/05/17/nabokov/index.html[an article about Sergei Nabokov, Vladimir's brother]
Nabokov, Dmitri (2008) Afterword. p. 249-254.
In
Cytowic, Richard and Eagleman, David (2009) Wednesday is indigo blue: discovering the brain of synesthesia. MIT Press, 2009.
http://www.cytowic.net/Foreword--Nabokov2.pdf[This book includes a very interesting afterword by Dmitri Nabokov, son and literary executor of Vladimir Nabokov, in which he discusses his own synaesthesia and his late father's synaesthesia, which can be found on the internet in a separate document.]
Cytowic, Richard (2002) Synesthesia: a union of the senses. Second edition, MIT Press, 2002.
[an interesting description of Nabokov can be found on page 109, with Cytowic making reference to Kevin Dann's book about synaesthesia]
Nabokov, Vladimir, Nabokov, Dmitri & Bruccoli, Matthew Joseph (1989) Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters, 1940-1977. Thomson Learning, 1989.

Berg, Tom (2008) Remembering every day of your life. The Orange County Register. April 25th 2008: Life Section.
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/brain-67200-says-cahill.htmlCBS News (2010) The Gift of Endless Memory. 60 Minutes (US). December 19, 2010. interviewer Lesley Stahl, producer Shari Finkelstein.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/12/16/60minutes/main7156877.shtml
[Jill Price only mentioned in this feature story in which the original term “hyperthymestic syndrome” has been replaced with the term “superior autobiographical memory”. Actress Marilu Henner identified as a case and one of the same researchers who studied Price, Dr James McGaugh, is interviewed by Lesley Stahl, with information about research findings about which parts of the brain give rise to this cognitive gift. Other people mentioned or interviewed in this story include: Brad Williams, Rick Baron, Bob Petrella and Dr Larry Cahill]

Marcus, Gary (2009) Total recall: the woman who can't forget. Wired. Issue number 17.04 April 2009, article dated 23rd March 2009.
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-04/ff_perfectmemory[A sample of Price's unusual handwriting can be seen in this article, which includes a window to a video clip of Price being interviewed from YouTube]

Marshall, Jessica (2008) Unforgettable. New Scientist. Issue 2643
February 16th 2008. p.30-33. Online article title: Forgetfulness is key to a healthy mind.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19726431.600-forgetfulness-is-key-to-a-healthy-mind.html[Price is “AJ” in this interesting article, which is about her, Brad Williams and the condition that they share, hyperthymestic syndrome. AJ’s ability to identify the day of the week for dates long past is noted, a clever trick that many savants can also perform. Researchers discussed in this article include McGaugh, Parker and Cahill who first described her, Daniel Schacter, Michael Anderson and K. Anders Ericsson. I can’t take any of these researchers too seriously, because it appears that none of them noticed that AJ is a synaesthete.]
Parker, Elizabeth S., Cahill, Larry, & McGaugh, James L. (2006) A case of unusual autobiographical remembering. Neurocase. Volume 12 Issue 1 February 2006. p. 35 – 49.
http://today.uci.edu/pdf/AJ_2006.pdfhttp://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content?content=10.1080/13554790500473680[number form synesthesia described on page 42]

Price, Jill & Davis, Bart (2008) The woman who can't forget: the extraordinary story of living with the most remarkable memory known to science - a memoir. Free Press, May 2008.
[number form synesthesia described on pages 30-31]

About Pythagoras of Samos
Brumbaugh, Robert S. (1981) The philosophers of Greece. SUNY Press, 1981.
[see page 35 for description of Pythagoras’ s OLP synaesthesia]
Cytowic, Richard and Eagleman, David (2009) Wednesday is indigo blue: discovering the brain of synesthesia. MIT Press, 2009.
[Pythagoras identified as a synaesthete]
About Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
A reference to a document describing Rimsky-Korsakov’s synaesthesia can be found at Sean Day’s web site and also at the Wikipedia article about famous people with synesthesia.

Morgenstern, Sam (1956) Composers on music: an anthology of composers' writings from Palestrina to Copland. Pantheon books, 1956.
[An anecdote recounted by Rachmaninoff about Scriabin and Rimsky-Korsakov can apparently be found here. I have not checked this book myself.]

About Jani Schofield
Michael Schofield has been commissioned to write a book titled “January first: one child’s battle with schizophrenia”. It appears that the publisher will be Broadway Books, part of the Crown Publishing Group/Crown Trade Group, which appears to be a part of Random House.
http://www.waxmanagency.com/deals.html

Myers, Charles S. (1914) Two cases of synaesthesia. British Journal of Psychology. Vol. 7 (1914-15), Part 1 (May 1914), p. 112-117.
[Scriabin is one of the cases described first-hand by Myers, who is the editor of the journal]
Peacock, K. (1985). Synaesthetic perception: Alexander Scriabin's color hearing. Music Perception. 2, p.483-505.
[I have not checked this reference]Visual music: synaesthesia in art and music since 1900. (2005) organized by Kerry Brougher, Jeremy Strick, Ari Wiseman, and Judith Zilczer ; essay by Olivia Mattis. Thames & Hudson, 2005.
[A book based on an art exhibition by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. This exhibition, Visual Music, charted the influence of synaesthesia and musical analogies on the development of visual art from the early twentieth century to the present. On page 213 in the essay by Olivia Mattis a chart compiled by Fred Collopy shows Scriabin's colour-music associations.]About Solomon ShereshevskiiElfakir, Abdelhadi (2005) Mémoire et autisme: de la neuropsychologie à la psychanalyse. Le cas de Cherechevski. I’Information Psychiatrique. Novembre 2005, Volume 81, Number 9, p.763-70.
[French paper that appears to be arguing that S. Shereshevskii was autistic]
Luria, A. R. & Solotaroff, Lynn (translator) (1968) The mind of a mnemonist: a little book about a vast memory. Jonathan Cape.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/12983496/Alexander-Luria-The-Mind-of-a-Mnemonist[Shereshevskii’s name is given as “S” in this book, the author’s name is sometimes spelt Aleksandr Luriia, autism/AS not mentioned but S’s synaesthesia and extraordinary memory abilities are fully docmented]
Wilding, John M. and Valentine, Elizabeth R. Superior memory. Psychology Press, 1997.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=lBHYHgpxDEkC&dq=wilding+valentine+1997&source=gbs_navlinks_s[partly available at Google Books]
Wing, Lorna (1981) Asperger syndrome: a clinical account. Psychological Medicine. 11, p.115-129.
http://www.mugsy.org/wing2.htm[Shereshevskii mentioned as a possible case]

Yaro, Caroline and Ward, Jamie (2007) Searching for Shereshevskii: what is superior about the memory of synaesthetes? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. 2007 May;60(5):681-95.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17455076[some discussion of Shereshevskii, and Figure 1 shows the many types of synaesthesia of his described by Luria, with page numbers given]
About Jean Sibelius
Ekman, Karl & Birse, Edward (translator) (1938) Jean Sibelius: His life and personality. Alfred A. Knopf, 1938.
[see pages 41-42]
Goss, Glenda Dawn (2009) Sibelius: a composer's life and the awakening of Finland. University of Chicago Press, 2009.
[synaesthesia apparently mentioned on pages 92, 106, 267]

About Sting CBEThe Musical Brain (2009)
http://www.sbs.com.au/documentary/program/themusicalbrain[This Canadian documentary was broadcast in Australia on SBS1 on January 12th 2010. It is about the relationship between music and the human brain. It shows a neuroscientist from McGill University studying Sting’s brain using brain scanning technology. At around 53 minutes into the documentary (or around 46 minutes into the clip available for viewing at the SBS Documentary website) it is found that when Sting was imagining music the strongest activation in his brain was found in the visual cortex. The scientist asked Sting about this, asking if metaphorical thinking was the cause of this interesting finding. Sting identified the music of Bach as some of his favourite music and observed “When I listen to Bach I hear architecture ... chambers ... towers ... buttresses ... domes ...” I could find no mention of synaesthesia in this documentary.]
About Tilda SwintonMaureen (2010) Narnia's white witch a synesthete. Synesthesia. (blog). April 3rd 2010.
http://mindprisms.blogspot.com/2010/04/narnias-white-witch-synesthete.html[blogger Maureen thanks synaesthesia expert synaesthetes Dr. Sean Day and James Wannerton for giving her the news that famous actress Tilda Swinton is a synaesthete, presumably in reference to the press story by White]

Bor, D, Billington, J, Baron-Cohen, S. (2007) Savant memory for digits in a case of synaesthesia and Asperger syndrome is related to hyperactivity in the lateral prefrontal cortex. Neurocase. 2007 Oct;13(5):311-9.
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a791809555http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/psych/nncs
[Unfortunately this revealing paper remains behind a paywall. Daniel Tammet is definitely the subject of this study, named “DT” in this paper. The fMRI study failed to find expected activity that would indicate synaesthesia, but did find activity consistent with the use of the memory technique known as “chunking”. Authors tried to explain findings with a claim that Tammet’s synaesthesia is a special type.]

Foer, Joshua (2011) Moonwalking with Einstein: the art and science of remembering everything. Allen Lane/Penguin, 2011.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/56318708/Joshua-Foer-Moon-Walking-With-Einstein
[includes a chapter about Tammet in which Tammet’s achievements in the World Memory Championship under his original name of Daniel Corney in 1999 and 2000 are discussed, Tammet’s synaesthesia and savantism is questioned and the author considers whether Tammet’s remarkable talents are best explained as the result of training]

Grandin, Temple (2009) How does visual thinking work in the mind of a person with autism? A personal account. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London B Biological Sciences. May 27th 2009 364(1522): 1437–1442. PMCID: PMC2677580 doi: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0297
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1522/1437.full
[Tammet discussed as an autistic “pattern thinker”]

Maguire, Eleanor A., Valentine, Elizabeth R., Wilding, John M. & Kapur, Narinder (2002-3) Routes to remembering: the brains behind superior memory. Nature Neuroscience. Volume 6 Number 1 January 2003 p.90-95.
Published online: 16 December 2002 doi:10.1038/nn988
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v6/n1/pdf/nn988.pdf
[According to info about Tammet in an article by Dr. D. Treffert published at the website of the Wisconsin Medical Society, Tammet was one of the World Memory Championship competitors studied in this study by UK researchers, including one from the Institute of Neurology in London.]

The Boy with the Incredible Brain. (2005) Focus Productions (Bristol UK)/Discovery Science Channel for five.
[An episode in the Extraordinary People doco series. Same as or similar to the 60 minute 2005 documentary Brainman. Martin Weitz credited as director of Brainman and credited as producer of this documentary, apparently directed by Steve Gooder. Martin Weitz, Toby Trackman and Steve Gooder were nominated for the Huw Weldon Award for Specialist Factual (BAFTA) in 2005. The documentary won a Royal Television Society award in December 2005. This is from a press article about the doco: “Martin Weitz, executive producer; Charlie Parsons, executive producer for the Science Channel. Produced for the Science Channel by Focus Productions.” This 47 minute doco is about Daniel Tammet, who was not a boy in this doco but was in his 20s. Tammet displays his calculating and language abilities, describes his synaesthesia, and travels to the US to meet famous autistic savant Kim Peek. This can be viewed through Google Videos or YouTube.]

Treffert, Darold (accessed 2011) Daniel Tammet - Brainman: "Numbers are my friends". Wisconsin Medical Society.http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant_syndrome/savant_profiles/daniel_tammet
[This is a page about Tammet, whom the “savant syndrome” expert Dr Treffert has met. Treffert has apparently taken a quote from Tammet’s own website Optimnem which includes a claim that Tammet won a gold medal at the “‘Memory Olympics’ in London in 2000” and also a claim that Tammet was studied by researchers at the Institute of Neurology in London which was published “in the New Year 2003 edition of the highly prestigious Nature neuro-scientific magazine.” It appears that this information is no longer published at Tammet’s Optimnem website.]

Pi Record (2011) Optimnem: Daniel Tammet: the official website.http://www.optimnem.co.uk/pi.phpAbout Nikola Tesla
Fitzgerald, Michael, and O’Brien, Brendan (2007) Genius genes: how Asperger talents changed the world. Autism Asperger Publishing Company, 2007.
[Nikola Tesla and many other famous people are identified as having AS or possible cases, parts of this book available to read free through Google Book Search]

Sacks, Oliver (2008) Musicophilia: tales of music and the brain. (revised and expanded), Picador, 2008.
[Torke’s synesthesia is described in detail in Chapter 14 The key of clear green: synesthesia and music]

About Opal Whiteley
A full list of references about Opal Whiteley can be found in my new book about Opal Whiteley, her synaesthesia and some
other famous and fascinating synesthetes. It can be
downloaded from its page at Smashwords:

Fitzgerald, Michael (2005) The genesis of artistic creativity: Asperger’s syndrome and the arts. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2005.
[Wittgenstein, Kant, van Gogh and many other famous people identified as having AS]

Fitzgerald, Michael (2004) Autism and creativity: is there a link between autism in men and exceptional ability? Brunner-Routledge.
[Wittgenstein and other famous intellectuals identified as autistic, this book is at least partially available to read through Google Book Search]

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Anscombe, G.E.M. (editor, translator) & von Wright, G.H. (editor) (1970) Zettel. University of California Press.
[according to a note on p.142 in the book by Ward cited above, the quote by Wittgenstein that seems to suggest that he had synaesthesia, quoted in Ward’s book, is from Zettel 185, 32e]

Wolff, Sula (1995) Loners: the life path of unusual children. Routledge, 1995.
[Wittgenstein and Opal Whiteley are both described as schizoid and profiled in Chapter 12 of this book]